Of Kittens and Broken Things
by Recidiva
Summary: Prompt for a story with a Shepard who is nerdy and shy but tactically gifted, doing her best to appear to be a fire breathing force of nature while mostly wanting to stay in her room and read. AU. FemShep/Garrus. Shakarian with Thane insisting on 'it's really complicated' Shrios. Narrated on YouTube under the name Recidiva Quixotic. Cover art by KuraiUmmei from Deviantart.
1. Chapter 1

Cara Fanning was a young woman, and she considered herself to be the luckiest person in creation. She had just gotten an Omni Tool for her fourteenth birthday. Omni Tools were rare here, and her parents had surprised her with one because she was a hard worker and had a real impact on the harvest. Their farm in Mindoir Colony was idyllic, most of the inhabitants called the settlement Sanctuary. Her parents had told her that they had moved out here to escape industrialization, fell in love with the planet, fell in love with the future here. The colony was able to produce so much food that they could feed themselves easily and sell the rest to the Alliance, sell dextro crops to the Hierarchy, take items in trade, their needs low. Mindoir was an experiment that had worked well, so her parents had said. Take hard work, faith and a perfect climate and they could do so much.

Her parents had told her that there was a dream of idealism, but it was reliant on science, circumstance and hard work. The soil could grow dextro and levo, could support both crops, had no insect life or predators that would impinge on the crops, and therefore they were able to revert to human labor to grow them. Maintenance was a great deal less than it might be on Earth, fuel costs kept low with enthusiastic colonists wanting to get their hands into soil, away from complications of higher tech lifestyles.

She knew shortly after accessing her Omni Tool that the version she had was seemingly old and needed to be upgraded, but that just endeared it to her. She murmured "I'm young, you're old, we're going to get along fine." She tried to think of a name for her. Her Omni Tool was definitely a her, and she customized the light to a soft peach. Not needing to reach terribly far, she named her Omni Tool Georgia.

Her parents had decided her curiosity was growing beyond their ability to teach her, she needed access to libraries beyond the extensive one in their settlement, the generous one in their own home. Cara enjoyed the feel of books, but the sense of information flowing to her, flowing through her with the gift of Georgia was a real joy, a new joy. Her parents wanted her to know all of her options, think about who she wanted to be when she grew up. Cara imagined herself staying on Mindoir…but maybe she'd visit the Citadel. Maybe she'd see a Prothean museum on Thessia. Maybe she'd learn about all the crops possible, levo and dextro, see the worlds, come home to stay in the enveloping community and deliberate pace of the seasons of Sanctuary.

There was a woman, Silvie, in Sanctuary who had studied the religions of the galaxy, and Cara joined her several nights a week, as did others in the community, to discuss spiritual and religious themes. Cara learned some of the mysteries of Drell sand script and respected the purposely impenetrable traditions of the Drell people, appreciating the beauty of their art, realizing that not all secrets would belong to her, but she could respectfully share what was offered. She learned of the Hanar Enkindlers and their reverence of the Protheans. Their religion seemed somewhat heavy to Cara's heart, but she appreciated the devotion to something solid, something left behind, something given new significance without the original context. She learned of the Thessian Goddess and marveled at the art and literature of the Asari, who seemed to be in charge of most things. She learned of Turian devotion to ancestors and the idea of the generation of Spirits through action and intent. Silvie taught her about Salarian dedication to discovery, the intricacies and flow of that.

That subject led her to scientific principles, to Richard Feynman, to philosophies that discussed internal and external bias, personal responsibility for choices, ethics and…

And there was so much to read she would never be able to read it all, but she was going to try.

In her studies about Feynman a small fact finally explained something about herself to herself.

Richard Feynman had Grapheme-color synesthesia. She looked up his accounts, the accounts of other people. A quote from him "When I see equations, I see the letters in colors – I don't know why. As I'm talking, I see vague pictures of Bessel Functions from Jahnke and Emde's book, with light-tan j's, slightly violet-bluish n's, and dark brown x's flying around. And I wonder what the hell it must look like to the students."

Feynman had made up his own mathematical notation, but had been unable to propagate it, possibly because it was cued to his mind specifically, and although it was a perfect tool for him…

That was such a beautiful idea, and Cara fell lightning bolt in love with how strange and wonderful the human mind was.

Cara had synesthesia, now she knew it was a real thing. One of her heroes had experienced it, had built an internal world with color and depth that only he was able to experience because of how his mind worked.

It wasn't the first base board in her internal cathedral, but it was solid and sure, shared finally, named and placed. She began to see synesthesia in some religious contexts. Couldn't seeing auras or even halos be a form of synesthesia? Impressions of character portrayed the same way Feynman saw brown wherever there was an x? The brown did not exist…except in his mind, but it was a clue, a marker.

Cara had her own code, her own constellation of indicators that happened in her mind. She had impressions of people. She did not…exactly see auras, but she got lightning bolt moments, times where something or someone seemed to vibrate, or glow, especially notable in the way her curiosity could light on something and she could become instantly obsessed, projecting an irresistible trail of bread crumbs, the joy of finding a new idea urging her on again to the next.

Georgia allowed her to build her quiet faith in herself, in the mysteries of things, in the vibration and glow nobody else saw. She learned about all the histories of all the worlds, wars and peace and art and literature, people and ideas.

She was the luckiest person in the galaxy, to have her opportunities to learn.

She learned that religion and science had in the past in several places been seen as opponents, but others had managed to blend them, and the thoughts were beautiful, ethereal, or lightning bolt searing.

When her mother called her down to her birthday dinner she thanked her parents effusively…again…for their gift.

Her father kissed the top of her red hair, which they all shared. He looked down at her with bright green eyes, which they also shared. "You're welcome, Lal. You've earned it. Wish we could get you more, but if I know you, you'll make better use of that thing than anybody else with the newest version."

Lal was short for Lalique, a form of Earth art glass. Her father said she was always transparent, ethereal and catching the light.

However, they were farmers, and her mother reminded her that being made of artistic glass was a lovely thing, but getting dirty was necessary and cleaning up even more so. Cara's mother taught her forms of martial arts for the beauty and exercise of it. Many of the more stylistic forms had been created when owning weapons was forbidden. It was a reminder that someone forced into ignorance need never stay there, given ingenuity and will.

Cara smiled at the spread of some of her favorite foods and said her version of Grace, not affiliated with any religion in particular "I give thanks for Sanctuary, for the opportunities we've been granted, for the choices we've made. I give thanks for another year of life, for my family, for this community where I can learn, where we can make a better life. We have been granted seed and harvest, and the harvest has followed the seed so often that we have not needed faith. If I have a wish, it is that new seed be given to those who need it, all the faith required, a whole body for hard work and a vision for the future."

Her mother said "Seconded. Pass the bread!"

oOoOoOoOoOo

For her fifteenth birthday, Silvie promised personal sessions to Cara. Silvie and Cara began more explorations of religious and spiritual traditions, sharing more of their personal styles. Silvie was an excellent teacher of religion, but she considered herself to be more spiritual. "Cara, I am afraid that when religions become too solid, too unbending, no matter where they started, they can become tools of dogmatic enforcement. Studying religion can be about learning what mistakes have already been made with some of the greater ideas of our forebears. There seems to be no idea that cannot be twisted. When a religion values something, even if that thing is as pure as valuing family, it can be twisted into deifying that value. Once a value becomes infinite…divine…then the defense of that value can be taken up with infinite action. Then it falls prey to more mundane motivations, greed, fear and violence masquerading as righteousness. That is when horrors become justified. That's when people die for religion. Even the Asari, who are advanced, still stigmatize "pure blood" birth. Yes, occasionally it creates what is called an Ardat-Yakshi, but there is nothing inherently genetically flawed about being pure blood to an Asari. The odds of being Ardat-Yakshi are the same as any other harmful genetic condition. Asari wouldn't exist at all if they hadn't been pure blood for millennia. But now after contact with other species it is philosophically opposed, therefore it is socially opposed, blaming pure bloods for something they have no control over, stigmatizing them. Thus religion becomes social practice. It seems no society escapes this, though some to a greater extent than others."

Cara asked "We're trying to escape it here in Sanctuary, though."

Silvie said carefully "This is a young community, very idealistic, and we come from an affluent source. Remember we wouldn't be able to live here idyllically without the support of an industrialized culture. It's a bit like Marie Antoinette dressing like a shepherdess."

A new story. Cara loved these.

Silvie continued "Marie Antoinette was a young queen of France. She had every indulgence and lived in Versailles, an extravagant palace. Still, with that, she had the Hameau de la Reine – The Queen's Hamlet, built. She'd travel there, commune with her cultured and manicured version of nature, dress as a shepherdess."

Cara kept up with this on her Omni Tool, bookmarking passages and articles and pictures to look into later, as she always did with Silvie's discourse.

Silvie knew she'd do her own reading so she concluded "We have all the medical, technical and spiritual tools we could need. We are really here to grow things because not only do we have everything we need, but we also know that progress will continue without us, as we indulge in some retro relaxation by choice. It's a privilege. It's not nobility, or at least it isn't noble unless we do some good with it. We make lots of money and we feed people, so that's good. But in this story, we are the Queen and the Citadel is Versailles. With distance also there's division, and even some humans think this colony resembles a cult. Not everyone understands why someone would live a slower life, why we wouldn't indulge in alcohol or drugs, why we stay separate. I worry sometimes that we've made ourselves too vulnerable physically and philosophically here."

Cara read up a lot on sheep, Versailles, royalty, revolution, cults…

Best. Birthday. Ever.

oOoOoOoOoOo

For her sixteenth birthday, Cara had been given a kitten by Vasili, a young man her age who had been trying to get her attention and pull her away from her books and had not quite managed. Cara enjoyed Vasili as a friend, but unless conversation was about something…Cara was the worst.

Cara's mother said she'd get better at it. "Just talk to people like you talk to us."

Cara had said with some exasperation "Mom…you're smart. Not everyone else is."

Cara's dad had laughed and said "It's okay, Lal. You need someone as smart as you are and that's not going to be easy. Vasili likes you. That means he's at least got some sense. What are you going to name this ball of fluff?"

Cara looked down at the little orange striped kitten, apparently a stowaway pregnant cat on an Alliance freighter had kittens in the engine room. Who let the cat on or whether or not the cat let itself on was a mystery, with Vasili the beneficiary, who had offered to take two kittens off their hands. He kept one and gave one to Cara.

Cara rolled her eyes and said "It was awful, Dad. I just said thank you, stared and then did the social equivalent of sprinting away."

Her father had said "Yeah, too bad he doesn't know how to discuss astrophysics."

Cara wished someone would discuss astrophysics with her, certainly, but that wasn't the kitten's fault. She said "I'll name the kitten George Ellery Hale."

Her mother had laughed "That's an ambitious name. Look on the bright side, Cara, the kitten's going to be good, quiet company while you study for hours."

Her father said "And hours."

Cara, smiled, adjusted the sleep fluff ball and said to it quietly "And hoooours. C'mon, Hale. Time to download some upgrades to the Omni Tool that my magnificent parents got for me."

Her father winked "We're cool like that."

oOoOoOoOoOo

It had been a few weeks since Hale had been given as a gift, and Cara was trying to figure out whether or not Hale was going to manage to be an outside cat or not. He chewed on everything, and she didn't know if he would have a dextro allergy.

Due to there being no insect life…or much life at all, he also didn't have much to chase, so Cara brought him out to patches of ground that were mostly stone, watched carefully as he attempted to gnaw his way through the tough native plant life. It took him a while, kept him busy and seemed to do him no harm.

She brought little bits of crumpled paper for him to chase. She'd throw one and he'd bolt after it. Eventually he learned that was the most fun he was going to have, so he was smart enough to learn to bring them back to her. He was somewhat grudging and offended by having to do this, so she ignored his efforts and didn't try to praise him. They both pretended the little balls of paper just teleported back to her. They spent several companionable hours this way a day, Hale exploring, gnawing and nudging at her to notice that there were a few neglected balls of paper that required her attention if she got too involved in study.

She'd found a new passion for theater. New upgrades to this Omni Tool gave her not only access to text libraries and lectures, but more Extranet entertainment options and she was burning her way through everything from Elcor Shakespeare to Blasto. It had been a revelation. While Hale was growing up she'd been able to talk to Vasili, actually talk to him, and not about astrophysics. She was able to thank him for Hale, smile and ask him about his own kitten, about what interested him. It was a milestone of achievement there, and she owed it to Georgia's upgrades and theater.

It terrified the hell out of her, way out of anything considered comfort or zone…but she'd work on it.

Talking to people about something she was interested in was the easiest thing, but making up something to talk about…exhausting.

So she tried to lead conversation to someone volunteering a topic, and then listening.

She didn't have to be herself with other people. She could be someone else, someone with a script, someone who was not painfully curious. That was her main problem with people…she wanted to interrupt everything they said, ask more questions, all the time more questions. She wanted to ask Vasili where his name came from, where did his parents come from on Earth, what did he think…well…what did he think about everything?

Most often though with some of her favorite subjects, she'd get a blink and a "I don't know anything about that…"

People seemed to move slowly compared to the speed her brain wanted to barrel through, and she tried to adopt a more comfortable persona - comfortable for them, not her - smoothed herself out, clamped down on her curiosity and listened.

It wasn't lying, exactly, it was…accommodating. She was going to be an accommodating person, learn about patience. Not everybody lived in a world of super-saturated knowledge, synesthesia brightening the worlds.

She could always look forward to being alone, retreat back to the flow of curiosity and knowledge sparking, making new connections in her mind.

Hale had also given her a new idea. There weren't too many animals on Mindoir, maybe she'd change that. No livestock. Sanctuary was essentially vegetarian, ate what they produced. But pets would be nice. Veterinary medicine sounded interesting. She'd at least like to know how to reverse a potential dextro allergy in a cat.

A ship seemed to be coming in for a landing, but she didn't recognize it. It didn't look like an Alliance or Hierarchy vessel. She took a quick picture of the vessel, did an image search.

Batarian.

She read the word with a sizzling freeze along her spine. Batarian. A style of ship associated with Batarian slavers. Bright red warnings. Wanted.

Her parents didn't have Omni Tools. She couldn't let them know. She was half a mile out. The Batarians would be into Sanctuary proper before she could get back to warn anybody.

Think, Cara.

She gathered up Hale, who wasn't quite done with one particular paper ball and resented being picked up in the middle of his important mission. She bundled him up under her shirt, his claws digging into her skin, her hand supporting him and making sure he didn't fall, didn't get away.

Think.

She did have an Omni Tool, and she could do something. There were Extranet contact frequencies she could attempt. Links for contact regarding the vessel's wanted status. She tried, more and more frustrated, because they were all message services, she could not speak to a real person. She still left several urgent messages "This is Cara Fanning, reporting that Mindoir Colony is under attack by Batarian slavers." She forwarded the picture of the ship.

There should be Alliance vessels nearby, this was the Attican Traverse, not the Terminus systems, but there were Batarians…there were Batarians here.

Think.

She was a sixteen year old girl with a kitten, a few balls of paper and an Omni Tool named Georgia.

Her immediate thought was of her family, bringing her father's voice to her head "Lal, I am going to tell you to hide. Don't you…dare…put your life in danger. Hide. Now. Don't come out until the Alliance gets here."

She thought of her mother's voice "Cara, be smart. Don't kid yourself that a need to do something, anything, would be brave. We're your parents. It's our job to die before you. Remember what I've taught you. Do not let ignorance get you killed."

Hale's claws dug in deeper as he scrabbled against her hold.

Cara swallowed, hard, and chose not to hide, but neither was she going to march into the center of town.

She knew how to shoot a gun, her mother had made sure of it. But what happened if Batarians heard a gun?

She began a paced loped run back to town that she knew would not wear her out or wear her down, her mind spinning possibilities and probabilities.

As she got closer she heard so many gunshots that if she'd had a gun, it would have been indistinguishable. Screams. Smoke. Fire. A second freighter had landed, larger. Enough to hold colonists and the contents of stasis silos.

The terrain was too open. She had no safe approach vector. It was daylight and despite rising smoke visibility was clear. She could not get to her house. She was on the far side of the settlement, as close as she could get in this light.

Screams. Smoke. Fire.

She helplessly watched from behind an outcropping of exposed stone as the people of Sanctuary were systematically herded from their homes, some shot and left to choke on blood, some kicked to death.

Horrible things.

She knew the history of the Batarians, their spiritual beliefs, the rivalry between Batarians and humans. She had read about it, seen previous colonies destroyed. It had seemed like the past, like all other conflicts that had been something she could learn about.

She heard her parents' voices as they would really speak to her. She heard her own voice in honest evaluation. She was still a sixteen year old girl who could not even control a small cat, blood slowly drying, dripping as he formed new furrows with his claws.

She looked often to the skies, hoping to see an Alliance vehicle. All she saw was spreading smoke.

Her parents' voices chanted in her head, the smartest people she knew. "Do not leave cover, Lal. Save yourself. You're smart enough to know how this would go. You could kill a few Batarians, maybe, and then inspire them to murder more inhabitants in revenge."

"Cara. You can't make this better. Please don't make it worse. Don't throw your life away, don't die with us. We need you to live."

She waited for a glow, for a vibration, for a path, as the descending dark spread over Sanctuary, and she imagined rescues, the Alliance storming in and taking back what was theirs.

This was the true difference between Religion and Spirituality. She had never prayed to a God or a Goddess, she'd learned about how people created them, imagined them. Perhaps if she believed in Fate with a capital letter, she'd have a vibration, a glow, a calling. Instead she just had an unusual mind. Right now a helpless mind. A useless mind.

Her only tool was despair, and it was a shield, and the shield was made of solid stone. Maybe her parents' voices were her Fate.

When it was hours into full dark she managed to pick her way carefully to the far side of Sanctuary, the home she had known one of the smoking wrecks that added fuel-flame bursts and electronic pops to the cloud of smoke.

The Batarians had passed through this section, had taken or killed humans. The silos that were not on fire were being emptied into the cruiser.

She saw her mother's body first, her father not far away. The frame of the home had burned, but there was a cellar, and the floor had not been flammable. Battered but not burned bodies. Three dead Batarian bodies were in the same room, having been lined up, probably by the Batarians that had overwhelmed her parents. But for the hair and remnants of clothing she might not have been able to identify them, their bodies still scorched from heat and falling debris, shot and defiled, faces ruined. No eyes to close. She imagined they had fought back to back, but had been separated after death by the same hands that had killed them and then lined up Batarian bodies in haphazard respect, but still leaving them behind to burn. She hoped they had been touching when they died, as they had been touching as they lived.

She heard her father's voice in her head urge "Lal…you can't stay here. We love you. Get food and water, get a blanket and go. Forget what you see here, remember how we love you. We need you to live."

She heard her mother's voice "Cara…you're so smart. You can only save yourself now. They don't know about you, they know about everyone else. Get out, get away, wait for the Alliance. Remember what I've taught you. You need to use your mind. Cry for us later. Don't make a sound now. Go. Hide."

Blood dripped down her chest and tears dripped down her face, smoke stinging.

She listened to her parents as she always had, first dragging their bodies together and putting their hands together. They were cold and bloody and spoke to her urgently.

She had a bundle of food, water, a blanket, cat food in short minutes from the cellar, and then she was back in the impenetrable dark behind more shielded stone. She got Hale food and water, though she didn't let him out of her hands, which he resented. She got more than a few bites and scratches, which she ignored and he repeated until he got tired and fell asleep.

She did not sleep, watching lazy spirals of smoke that seemed uncaringly whimsical when they were at a distance and no longer in her eyes, in her nose.

She cried for her parents because it was now later. It was always going to be later.

She remembered Marie Antoinette did ultimately meet the guillotine. She wondered what happened to Silvie.

Something horrible. Something brave.

She thought of someone Silvie had spoken about, Kahlil Gibran, and remembered him saying "Often times I have hated in self defense. If I were stronger I would not have used such a weapon."

Silvie had spoken of hate often as insidious, cruel, giving oneself over to it the end of the heart, the end of hope.

My parents wouldn't want me to hate. Silvie would not have wanted me to hate.

I won't let them undo me as they've undone your lives. Your spirits are what will survive today. They can't kill that.

Hours and days passed from the almost poetic viewpoint she'd cultivated, smoke curls and speaking spirits, caring for a kitten as light changed, eating and drinking with him. Through the long vigil the Batarians left, setting everything remaining on fire, empty silos, empty houses, piles of bodies, fields.

She was still awake when Alliance ships landed. Far too late to save anybody but her. She waited two hours, watched and was sure there were no lingering Batarians, after Alliance troops had cleared the remaining smoking structures.

She walked toward the Alliance ship slowly, on the most visible trajectory, a captive kitten shredding fabric between her and her skin, one hand in the air in surrender. She doubted she'd be mistaken for a Batarian.

She spoke a moment of Grace to Batarian souls that had died, Batarian souls that had been driven to predation and murder, their bodies mixed in with the human souls whose bodies she knew, who she had named over and over in the past days.

She heard a harsh voice from behind a building "No automated warnings, no defense, that's what you get when you join a fucking cult."

Cara didn't flinch, didn't hate, didn't turn toward the voice, didn't see a face.

Finally it happened, the synesthesia redundant and seemingly trite, her eyes passed back to the Alliance cruiser backlit inside her head.

So the Alliance wasn't just here to save the day, it was important to her, would be important. She'd hear that voice honestly too, surprise not managing to shift the oppressive grief.

A woman in uniform intercepted her "Are you injured? What's your name?"

Cara answered calmly "I'm not injured, or not from the Batarians. Just a frightened cat. I'm bleeding but he didn't mean it. My name's" She made a split second decision, the name also backlit in her head, distinct, the result of days of watching smoke, of her mother telling her to hide, her father telling her to forget what she saw there "…Lal Shepard."

oOoOoOoOoOo

The Alliance found no records of Lal Shepard at the Mindoir Colony, but neither could they link her up to Cara Fanning, because she only had a paper birth certificate filed.

To her silent repetitions of the name Lal Shepard she was given new identification, dropped off at a station/school and allowed to keep Hale with her.

She cultivated a stony silence, which had worked when asked about what she was doing on Mindoir, what had happened. She had given her account honestly of what she had seen, but not who she had seen or why it had mattered. She cultivated a blank expression.

She was a cadet. People stopped asking her about Mindoir, because she never answered a question about it unless it was in general terms. She'd heard enough grumblings about cults and ignorance to know that the Alliance seemed to blame every member of Mindoir for being there at all. She escaped having to defend herself from that particular condemnation because she was young, had a kitten and a stony silence. She remembered every moment, but she wouldn't relay it.

She was too raw to listen to any lecture about cults or idealistic people.

She listened. She listened to the attitudes of the cadets and the instructors around her, as though she were watching theater. It was as foreign to her experience as Elcor Midsummer Night's Dream.

In fact the Elcor habit of speech helped her as a template in the military.

Irinia, her roommate, was a font of example and constant questions "Shepard, what the hell…you never eat the meat."

Lal looked at Irinia and saw a few opportunities. She wasn't about to say "Because it would make me throw up, I have never eaten meat. I will never eat meat. It was important to my parents, it's important to me."

That sounded…cultish, didn't it?

Instead she answered in Irinia's rough patois, making her voice sound harsher and more judgmental "Is that what it is? Meat? Hard to tell. You want it, it's yours." She implied that she had standards.

Irinia hadn't asked twice, and eventually got in the habit of spearing the offensive lengths off her plate as Lal tilted them toward her. Worked for them both.

She enjoyed the classes. She was already well read, well educated, breezed through. Her mother's training in hand to hand and weapons use gave her a status boost. Mutters about quiet and soft disappeared once she was ranked.

She got in the habit of taking a gun with her back into the woods, seemingly for target practice, brushing off anybody that wanted to go with her.

She'd find a nice quiet spot, read on Georgia and play with Hale, who had gotten good at holding still under bulky jackets when given enough incentive. He at least was happy with the introduction of meat to his diet.

She did what she'd done for a lifetime. She did what she was told, soaked up information and local culture like a sponge, and began to navigate it with a flair for Elcor theater and fitting in.

If she longed for quiet, nobody knew it. Nobody knew much of anything about her because of her fitting stony silence, Irinia's hand-me-down attitude and Hale's love for teleporting paper balls and chicken.

oOoOoOoOoOo

She had never questioned the vibrating reality of the Alliance cruiser, and with no family and no real dreams of her own, being in a group of highly armed individuals willing to train her was perfectly fine. She was grateful.

She'd read up on human attitudes toward the Mindoir colony, ranging from outrage to condescension, and moved on to address the perception of "cult" throughout history. Cult seemed to mean "Not My Religion" to most, and was prone to attack because it was a minority. Some had been truly dangerous, some benign, many crushed by public opinion.

So she learned about public opinion and made a study of it. She read up on military heroes. Beyond that she soaked in tactics and wartime strategy with unending thirst, each new way to solve a problem with lives on the line lighting up her brain.

Military careers could save lives. They could and had saved lots of lives, including hers, so that was where she'd head.

Maybe someday she'd still visit Thessia, or the Citadel, but for now…for now she'd stay on top of the rankings, polish her Elcor Military Style and see what happened.

oOoOoOoOoOo

What happened was Elysium, six years later.

Shepard had begun to think she actually had a talent for veterinary skills. Maybe not medicine, but certainly psychological profile. So many people she met in the military seemed to need an alpha to follow. Although her animal experience had mostly involved one mostly ornery cat, she'd heard the word "Alpha" enough in her training to adopt the idea that military people were conditioned to follow an alpha, and that if she wanted to be followed she would have to be one.

It worked.

It was occasionally disappointing that it worked, that people could be treated like dogs…but so many people responded to it that Elcor Veterinarian was a template she could use with most people. Then there was stone faced refusal. Those two ideas got her far.

She had been on shore leave on Elysium when the Skyllian Blitz was launched.

She hadn't been, as she had told people, learning new weapons techniques and training with a local sensei. She'd been baking.

Keeping up her badass image took a great deal of work, and she knew it was necessary. She didn't think that people would follow her if they knew she had a tendency to cry, could be brought low by kitten face and enjoyed baking as much as she did. She could never indulge on base, so for her vacation she'd found a place that had a shooting range, a local fighting tradition, and a pastry chef willing to instruct her for a week.

Bliss.

She never had warmed up to eating meat, though she had discovered a love for cream, eggs and chocolate.

Hale had developed such a love for these things that Shepard had left him in a bakery a few years back on Earth during a similar shore leave. She visited when she could, but after training and having no stable point to leave him, it had to be done.

She had cried for a week (never witnessed) but she had known it was the best for him.

Crème brulee was a perfect food. She was sure Hale agreed.

She got regular updates and video conferences with Hale, where she made faces and made noises suitable for a child, which he mostly ignored, but sometimes licked the camera, which thrilled her.

Her baby was happy.

On Elysium she had seen and heard the variety of ships landing from the open-air café where she was enjoying a competitor's pastry, and she had called it in, gotten to the local military base, yelled like hell at quite a few people to get their asses in gear, Veterinary style, and had defended Elysium.

She had saved a lot of lives. She had repelled a lot of Batarians.

She was hooked on this whole saving lives thing. Her parents would be proud. She heard their voices often. She celebrated with more pastry and a video conference, where she told Hale the whole story, did the voices and startled him with the descriptions of explosions. He was entranced, then went to go chase something.

oOoOoOoOoOo

She was good at being a badass. Strategically she was gifted, a mimic of military success in strategy and personality, good at adapting to circumstances and recalling historical solutions to some of the same military problems that occurred over and over in mundane warfare.

It was years before she had the privacy of her own command, but when she did it, she vowed to keep her cabin absolutely private. She was well into gathering her team on the Normandy, determined to save more lives, find out the threat, utilize her best options.

She was a growling, wise-cracking alpha who managed to recruit…actually he demanded…Garrus demanded and she went along with him. Meeting him had triggered that vibrating emphasis in her head, something that had still never steered her wrong. She considered Garrus to be Important. She just didn't know how yet. She'd watch. She'd listen. She'd figure it out. He was a growling, military, earnest Turian who seemed to think he wasn't all that Turian but he was exactly like other Turians she'd met.

It had to be a Turian thing that happened the same way humans happened. Groups that were very close to each other, but who disagreed on something silly, seemed to think they were divided by oceans when really it was about half an inch to everyone else.

Possibly C-Sec filled out its reports with the wrong type of pen, not a Palaven pen, and that was unacceptable. She did not imply this to Garrus, but listened carefully to him saying that he didn't like rules as he followed every single rule she gave him.

She saw an excellent sniper. Would come in handy.

Also…she thought…a nice guy. An actual nice guy. She wouldn't out him.

Wrex required an Alpha. Ashley required an Alpha.

Tali required someone to listen to her tell stories, and Lal was fascinated, still maintaining her incurious neutral pose, but delighted by researching Quarian culture in her spare time, actively having to bite her tongue when Tali was around to keep from gushing questions.

Kaidan…Lal ran away. Yes, she ran away, and felt just fine doing it. It seemed Kaidan Was Attracted to her and that was…no. Absolutely not. No fraternizing, no thank you.

Fortunately commanders could do that. It was not called "running away" it was called "not having time or interest and it's against regs" and she could do that. Not only could she do that, but it was expected, and he was Alliance enough to accept it.

Everything she'd ever learned about sex or attraction had been a massive and resounding 'nope' and it was not hard to keep it that way in the isolation of command in the middle of becoming the first human Spectre.

Everything was going fine, military wise, straight up until Liara offered to Embrace Eternity…

Lal was so interested in how it would affect finding Saren that she did not realize…at all…that she was inviting an Asari into her head.

The same head where she made smoochy faces at Hale.

The same head where brownies tended to show up inexplicably in refrigerators, unlabeled, until they disappeared and nobody ever asked who had put them there, everyone assuming they'd stolen a brownie.

Still, she'd baked a brownie and people had eaten them and how could brownies be wrong? She took advantage of the ethically negotiable zone that was an Alliance refrigerator.

The look of shock on Liara's face as she broke contact.

Oh…oh. Oh my career. Oh…my career on Liara's face. Lal flared her eyes and tried to take in Liara's panic and shock.

Oh, it's bad. That's bad. Oh.

Lal barked out "Professor T'Soni and I are going to discuss the beacon. I need everyone else sharp and ready to go tomorrow."

There was nothing for tomorrow and people looked a little uncomfortable, but began to clear out.

Oh. Oh.

I need a swear word.

I don't swear.

You swear like a soldier.

Yeah, when it's Elcor Commander time. Now I'm looking at Knowing Asari.

Oh.

She and Liara locked eyes until the door closed behind a curiously-looking-back Garrus.

Lal imagined they were all conferring about what this mysterious tomorrow thing would be.

Depending on Liara's reaction it might be "Commander spaced based on critical loss of confidence."

The smile on Liara's face spread slowly and Lal's eyes closed as Liara said "You…like to bake?"

Normally Lal would growl and threaten, but Liara would know better. Lal's eyebrows drew together and she said "Please…please…please…oh…please, don't tell anybody."


	2. Chapter 2

Lal put her head in her hands, imagining the destruction to her career.

Liara opened her mouth and then closed it, realizing they were in a conference room. High risk of monitoring and open channels. Liara flashed with bright shame at being caught so very much off guard. She looked at…Commander Shepard…who Liara had barely met, but knew of by reputation, even on her isolated digs she'd kept up with galactic events. She'd only known her for a few hours, but the inventive, military genius she had encountered could not at all be squared with…visions of sugarplums? Liara had no idea what a sugarplum was. Neither did Shepard, but it described her well.

Liara lost her smile and held up her hands again "Commander Shepard, I am so very sorry. Perhaps this is something best discussed…privately…again. If you would permit."

Lal stared at her. It seemed they were both near trembling.

Let the indiscreet, about-to-fall Asari back in your head or let her catalogue your sins out loud.

Lal closed her eyes, then opened them, sighed and said "All right."

Liara did her black-eyed thing again.

Lal couldn't help but ask in her inside voice "What does Embrace Eternity mean anyway?"

She got emotional content from Liara, which was interesting "It's…well, it's something we say."

Lal considered and wondered if she was leaking skepticism into Liara's brain "You can't tell the human?"

Liara was flustered "What? No, I…well…maybe yes. It has to do with the Goddess and our connection to all things."

Lal thought and said "A little pretentious for going diving in my head for memories? I didn't embrace eternity. I need you to promise that I am not embracing the end of my career. What did you see?"

Liara stuttered. A mental stutter. Seemed there was a flow to emotion and it got all…choppy. Liara said between waves of apprehension, potential images of being abandoned, of being taken by Saren's people without protection "Commander Shepard, you just saved my life. I was taken by surprise. I don't know many…well…any humans. Please forgive me."

Lal was calming down slightly "Okay. I'm sorry. I…I panicked."

Liara said "Commander Shepard, you have a mission. Whatever I discovered inside your mind is confidential, I promise. I just…well…it was…um. Loud."

Lal could believe that "Just try living inside here. Okay. Please…please try to remember me as a badass and not…whatever else you saw.' 

Liara responded with a flow of solemn promise "Of course. If you…I…I am about to faint."

Oh.

OH.

Oops.

Lal supported Liara to the med bay and asked Dr. Chakwas to immediately let her know if there was something she could do, if they needed to reroute to an Asari base to allow Dr. T'Soni to recuperate.

Please tell me she needs to go to an Asari base…

Unfortunately…Dr. Chakwas was convinced Dr. T'Soni would be fine and that her understanding of Asari physiology and medicine would be sufficient to this task.

Lal stood nearby, chewing on her thumb.

So she'd nearly broken the Asari, Tali would die if she got a suit breech, Ashley might kill Wrex and Garrus in their sleep out of loyalty to humans. Wrex might just kill them all for fun.

She was currently hiding from Kaidan.

This was it? This was her crew?

She remembered she had private quarters, and walked fast to them. She stopped and looked around at the cheerful and suddenly damning sight. She'd made a mistake here. It was obvious. She'd gone shopping on the Citadel before leaving, over-exuberance making her purchasing choices very questionable. Brightly colored pillows. Colored light strings. She loved them. They had to go.

She'd thought of this space as a sanctuary and had tried to take advantage of it, but it had been a Bad. Idea.

There were stuffed animals.

There was this adorable stuffed varren. She smiled.

No. No smiling. I have to get this crap out of here. She imagined dismantling every last incriminating bit of evidence and couldn't stand the idea. She could not de-fluff them, that was sacrilege. Okay. Storage. She had to pack this crap away. Right. Now.

All the relief and expansive joy of her first command collapsed in on itself with Liara's near-miss exposure, with the fact that she'd have to block entry to her quarters with her life.

Stupid, stupid.

She still picked up the varren and hugged it. She'd told people when cornered that they were gifts from children she'd rescued. Which was a lie, and lower than the mine they'd just escaped. It was plausible when there was only one stuffed animal, well concealed, but this was a display of poor impulse purchases.

But she loved them so much. She squeezed the varren, whose name was Sprinklebits, and apologized for putting her, again, in the dark. "Someday we can be together, Sprinklebits, but today is not that day."

She bit her lip. She was going to need storage. She left her quarters looking determined, managing to avoid any possibility of Kaidan catching her eye. Or anything else. Nononono.

Opaque. Storage. Maybe she could just ship them to herself. She had no permanent address. Storage on the Citadel? There had to be a way. I promise, Sprinklebits, I will find a way for us to be together. I just…have to find Saren first.

One elevator ride down and she was in the Mako bay. She went to the back and started rummaging around. There had to be some empty crates here. Opaque empty crates. She maybe should have gone to records, found a spreadsheet of inventory. In fact she was doing that tonight. Reading up on the inventory of the ship.

Where to hide stuffed animals and pillows…that she was going to miss.

She sighed deeply, suddenly not just worried, but sad.

Garrus had been absorbed in the maintenance of the Mako, after Therum it was a singed mess. Garrus had some experience with Mako models. He had never seen a better Mako driver than Shepard. Most people in a Mako would have made him motion sick and then steered them straight into lava. She'd managed to drive as though the treads followed a magnetic rail. Very impressive. Still, lava and a lot of Geth shooting at them for a few hours made dents and tweaked some undercarriage.

He'd adopted the maintenance of the Mako because he had no other job, and that made him crazed. He wanted to contribute, wanted to have a purpose here. He wanted to fit in.

Shepard made him feel…safer than he was accustomed to feeling. She was steady and measured, level headed and the best he'd seen in a fire fight. Better than he could do, certainly.

It was very strange being on a human vessel. A lot of things were new to him. He appreciated the synergy of Turian and human innovation in creating the Normandy, was proud to be a part of this mission. His mission, really, to bring down Saren. Now instead of Pallin saying no in condescending and suppressive tones to whatever Garrus brought forward, Shepard had been sold before he'd met her.

Garrus had gone through his military service, but there had been no active war at the time. The First Contact war had been over, and most of his military service had consisted of training and public works. Moving to C-Sec had been destined, what his father had wanted. Leaving was…hard on Garrus's sense of duty, but a relief to his sense of justice. He was no longer stuck at a desk, quietly sequestered and invalidated out of a promotion or assignment of meaningful cases, consigned to a label of ranting conspiracy theorist.

His father was livid. Not that that was new, really, it seemed as though Garrus's life had been a series of fending off displeasure and disapproval.

Shepard was different. He had expected a hard-bitten and razor edged human such that he'd heard about in the First Contact War, unpredictable and vicious.

What he'd gotten was…not that.

He really didn't know what or who she was.

Right now she was picking her way slowly through some of the storage in the back of the bay, he kept some of his tools there, he had no idea what…

She was biting her lip and her brows were drawn together.

Whatever it was that had Commander Shepard worried, when she'd faced down Colossus and Krogan with even determination, made him shiver.

He stepped closer to her and cleared his throat, said "Commander?"

She…squeaked…and he felt immediately guilty. She slammed her hand in a container she'd had open and he felt even guiltier.

Her scent was…he'd been in close quarters with this woman, knew how she was on a mission. When she was armored, when she was speaking, the metal in her eyes matched the metal of her scent. Not literally, but figuratively. Hard. Cold. Inflexible. Unbending. Now she…he was going to have to get accustomed to the fact that humans had no subvocals, could not hear subvocals and she maybe could not tell that he was trying to be helpful. He had not yet learned to pitch his voice to the right level of human hearing, and he'd obviously been too quiet.

He thought what he was smelling was fear, and she had every right to it. Anybody could tell this was a dysfunctional crew, seemingly gathered at random, without true Council support, very likely an intended trap to make sure the 'first' human Spectre, who was really the second human Spectre, would fail.

Maybe even the Normandy was set for sacrifice, considering the political tensions between Council races. He knew well enough the Hierarchy was under pressure to downplay their cooperation with humans, because it was being used as a wedge to drive the humans into a Council seat.

He would not allow that to color this mission. Their mission.

He instinctively moved to block Wrex's likely disinterested gaze. He was not going to take a chance here.

She turned, regained her balance and her face was flushed.

Did he make her nervous? Despite her insistence on Turian and human cooperation, had he not proven himself?

He'd try harder. He said a little louder after clearing his throat "Commander, is there…anything I can help you with here? It looks like a mess, but there's some order to it."

Her spine straightened and she smiled. He didn't know human expressions well. Was she trying to protect him from whatever was bothering her? Most likely. It was none of his business. He had faith that whatever it was, she'd find her way through. She didn't need him indulging his inappropriate curiosity.

She was…so very tiny. Sometimes he looked at her and could not imagine how in any realm of the Spirits humans had survived the First Contact War. Then she smelled like metal and he only heard her voice, seemingly taking up all the space sound could take.

Right now…she smelled like prey. His own spine straightened.

Get your nose in order, Vakarian. Don't make her reprimand you for being intrusive. Your Commander is not prey. No wonder she's nervous. You see her as tiny and delicate and she can't help but know she's seen that way.

She swallowed and said "Oh…hey. Sorry. Didn't realize you were there. I…uh. I really should be checking this through ship's inventory, but I couldn't resist getting my hands dirty. Inventory could only tell me so much and maybe some spot checks would make sure that inventory stays accurate."

He said calmly "Is your hand okay?" She wasn't bleeding, but human bruises were impressive. She had quite a few.

Her expression made him see her…as a woman. Not a human. Not a Spectre. A woman. A bruised woman who smelled like fear. His spine straightened a little further as she said "I'm. Yeah. I'm fine. It tried to bite, but…"

His mind blanked. It? It what…?

She felt massively lame and indicated the container. "Lid. Teeth. Bite."

He forced a laugh. She forced one herself.

She would like someone to drive over her with the Mako right about now.

He said carefully "Are you looking for anything in particular? I could help."

She thought of Sprinklebits and thought she'd perhaps shred her collection and flush it down the head strip by strip to teach her to not be so stupid. So she was not only a coward, but a potential and dedicated stuffed animal murderer. Clearly a Turian confuser. He was huge, and intimidating, and blocking the light. And now in a really unfortunate confluence of thoughts…she wanted a stuffed Turian, because…because there's something wrong with her. Several things wrong with her.

She had a searing moment of sweeping away every last bit of internal static that she could and then said "Everything okay down here, you finding everything you need?"

Garrus said calmly "Yes, ma'am. The Normandy is well stocked."

She smiled, glad about that, and said "Everyone treating you okay?"

He nodded solemnly "Absolutely. I hope…I hope my service has been satisfactory."

She blinked and said "Garrus, you saved my life at least four times today. I'd say so."

He said, sounding appalled "Only four?" It had been six, but she'd been out front.

She grinned "Four that I saw. You want to tell me about the other ones?"

He laughed "No ma'am. I'm sure you can figure those out on your own. Seems petty to keep score when the whole place exploded."

She made a face and said "Well, yeah, that's what happens when you get creative with mining lasers." She said confidentially "I can occasionally be petty."

He nodded solemnly "Me too."

She said "Let me know if you need anything, okay? I want to know if you have problems."

He said solemnly "I will Commander." He wanted to say he'd like it if she did the same. Spirits help him he wanted to ask her if she needed help getting something off a high shelf, to come find him.

She left, deciding to directly address inventory and find a large, empty, opaque box.

Then possibly put herself into it and never come out.

oOoOoOoOoOo

Noveria had frozen and shattered Lal's heart, helpless as the grief on Liara's face as Benezia's struggle was revealed, 'Little Wing' and darkness.

Lal wanted to fall to her knees as Liara had, taking her mother's hand, but although Benezia could no longer call Geth or commandos to her, the Rachni were still a threat. Lal and Garrus eyed the entrances to the room, listening for the slide of doors, weapons ready.

She almost shot the reanimated body of a commando, the startled "Oh!" her only comment.

She stared at the jerking, eerie poetry that was the Rachni queen's puppetry, and saw that the Rachni queen was glowing, vibrating, harmonizing with discussions of music.

Tears began to stream down Lal's face as the queen told her that her children had been severed from her and must be killed.

Too many lost mothers in this room, and Lal was unable to turn when Garrus and Liara discussed the benefits and drawbacks of setting loose a monster whose children spit acid that ate through their armor, whose children had killed so many people. Whose ancestors had nearly overrun the galaxy.

Could she hold this one singer responsible for the sins of her ancestors and offspring?

Lal moved her hand to wipe away tears, though it was the furtive movement that mimicked rubbing her eyes. She set the queen free. She was sure the queen told the truth. Lal stood, panting, after the chamber had closed and the possibility of calling the queen back or reversing the choice was gone.

They still had to get out of here. She clamped down on the grief, on the certainty, unable to express either. Now she needed to express the clearest path to survival of the most people and the death of the most Rachni.

Liara had made it back to her feet, her mother's body laid out in the same way that Lal had laid her mother and father together, straight and flat with hands clasped, though Benezia only had her own hands to join.

Lal could not help but take a moment to reaffirm her choice. "I can't condemn Her to extinction. I don't think…I don't think she was lying. I believe her."

Liara said bravely "There is enough death in this facility. I don't know what is going to happen later, but if that is your choice, I stand with you."

Garrus was a little slower, had provided a counterpoint to Lal's insistence that the Rachni queen be permitted to live. Lal could not even look directly at him, afraid she would begin to cry, dissolve and sink through the floor. He said in his calm, quiet voice "It's done, Shepard. We've got to get out of here before we're done too. I wouldn't have taken that chance…but I will back you up while you take it."

She closed her eyes and gathered her bruised and aching limbs, the tearing weight of the rifle in her hands. "Thank you. I can't…"

She wanted to say she couldn't express what that meant to her, but she shouldn't waste time on her feelings, no matter how overwhelming, no matter how immediate. She shouldered her rifle to take some weight off her trembling arms. She squeezed Liara's shoulder and Liara nodded solemnly. Lal managed to meet Garrus's eyes, and he met hers with his determined, steady gaze. They headed toward the hot labs to finish the mission and allow the remainder of the people in this facility to leave alive.

The only way back out was a searing, spitting field of experimentally feral Rachni, with Shepard insisting on being the last one out of the room, Liara speeding ahead and clearing a path with biotics, Garrus unable to watch both Liara and Lal, frantic with his long stride clearing his own path, reaching back to Lal and yanking her through the door.

A Rachni stinger had lodged in the back joint of Lal's leg armor and breeched the seal, burrowing into the muscle of her calf, spilling acid along the surface of her skin. She would not scream, tried to run but failed after two attempts at steps, and then began to hop.

Garrus growled, hadn't let go of her arm, took one look at the pulsing chitin still pumping venom and acid into her muscle, and carried her toward the tram.

Then she threw up on him.

Then she fainted.

Garrus's muscles were seared from the run, from the exhausting ordeal of clearing the facility that had been overrun by fossilized monsters history told them had been eliminated. Shepard was limp in his arms, spittle and foam and vomit, the scent of her acid-burned skin clotted in his nasal plates. He got her to the tram seats, flipped her to her stomach, he and Liara staring at the still-pulsing chitin relic of a Rachni stinger embedded in her flesh through her armor.

He did not know what to do. Pull it out and she could bleed to death. She had possibly already lost the leg. He didn't know human anatomy, he didn't know the risks.

Liara did not know what to do.

He told Liara "Contact Dr. Chakwas. I've got to get her armor off. I don't know what to do. Ask her."

Liara stared for another horrified moment and then used her Omni Tool, did as she was ordered, thankful that Garrus had the presence of mind to function through the horror.

Dr. Chakwas talked him through pulling out the reason why Krogan had been uplifted as warriors, the smell of bubbling flesh making Liara sure she was not suited for a soldier's life. Lal began to have convulsions and Dr. Chakwas guided Garrus through using what medical supplies they had, the remainder of their Medigel, and the use of Garrus's overheated sniper rifle to cauterize the wound, making Liara even more lightheaded as she clung to a support bar.

Garrus's voice was calm as he gave Liara orders, relayed requirements to the Normandy, had Joker come pick them up and the Mako, carried Lal out, careful of her leg, careful of everything as she was pale, green and grey.

He carried her to the Med Bay and did not consider leaving, glared at Dr. Chakwas when she suggested it and compromised by sitting out of the way. He'd had a few spatters of acid, but they were all easily treated by the readily available Medigel once he'd reached the Med Bay, slathering it on a few raw spots on his hide. He made sure Liara was uninjured. She had a few burns, but nothing requiring the doctor's attention. Garrus carefully checked before he released Liara to get out of her armor, it being more prone to corrosion than the full armor Garrus wore, the protection of his plates.

He sat, gritting his teeth until Dr. Chakwas assured him that she had salvaged Lal's leg.

Commander Shepard's leg.

He took his first whole breath and thanked Dr. Chakwas gravely, then sat by Lal's bedside, staring down at a small, pale human who insisted on taking up the rear position.

Commander Shepard.

Commander Shepard who had set loose the Rachni again.

He shook his head, buried his face in his hands, and waited for her to wake up.

He needed her to smell like metal again, and not bubbling, cauterized skin. He needed to not be terrified.

She had stabilized and Dr. Chakwas had excused herself to get a meal. Garrus had promised to alert her if anything happened.

She screamed. It was Lal screaming and not Commander Shepard and he knew it wasn't from the pain she was in now, but remembered pain. She was waking up and couldn't stop herself and he knew that feeling. He took her hand and squeezed, tried to yank her forward as he had in the hot labs, bring her to where it wouldn't hurt anymore.

Had she screamed like that on Mindoir?

Had she screamed like that on Elysium?

Had she wanted to scream like that as her leg boiled off?

Lal woke and choked off the sound, was aware of her hand being held, turned her head and saw a hulking, angry Turian.

Don't cry. Don't scream. She gritted her teeth and stared at the ceiling, unable to speak.

He let go of her hand and gave her a calm sit rep. "You're back on the Normandy. Dr. Chakwas saved your leg. Peak 15 is being evacuated, no further casualties."

She heard reprimand in every single word out of his mouth, felt it in his withdrawn hand, in the numbness below her hip, in the scream that echoed in her ears and hadn't been cleared from her head.

She maintained the grit in her teeth, clenching until her jaw hurt, until she felt her teeth would crack. She said with the most economy she could, desperate to escape, cowardly enough to use her leg as an excuse "Thank you. I owe my life to your quick thinking. How long will I be down?"

He answered mechanically "Two days at least. Skin graft needs to be immobilized."

She nodded incrementally "Thank you. You're in charge of the Normandy."

He wanted more. He wanted to see her eyes, see the color come back into her skin. He wanted to hold her hand again.

But he'd gotten something else he wanted. She smelled like metal, the clenched jaw and taut throat, head turned away made him say "Of course."

He had no idea what that meant, but he knew she had dismissed him, and no matter what she said, she was still in charge. He said, because he just could not leave it at that "Thank you, Commander." He meant it from a depth he could not express. She couldn't hear it as anything other than a courtesy, and she had no more voice to share.


	3. Chapter 3

Lal spent a lot of time staring at the Med Bay ceiling. She had…to get herself together.

Noveria had been a disaster. She hadn't been able to save Benezia.

When she thought about Liara's mother, her own mother's voice came into her head. Gentle. Kind. 'Cara. I'm so sorry. She made her choices, in the end she tried to do the best she could do. You couldn't have saved her.'

Who decides couldn't, mom?

She felt an emotional rush like humor, like love 'In this case, young lady, I do.'

Cara closed her eyes, imagined her mother holding her hand, kept the flow of humor and love traveling through her and she wasn't alone.

She was immobilized and couldn't turn her head into the pillow, couldn't cry for Liara or for herself, for her parents or for a singing queen in a cage with no mate and maddened children…and then no children.

But she wasn't alone, and that was what mattered.

Mom?

Yes?

You're dead. What do you know?

More humor from a posthumous running joke.

I know I love you, Cara.

I love you too. Always.

Then part of her was back on Mindoir, in bed with a twisted ankle, her father bringing her warm bread from the oven with kigi nut butter, and another part of her was wondering what to do next.

She pulled out her Omni Tool. Georgia was in storage, a relic from her prior single-track life. This Omni Tool was named Puck because she'd read a lot of Shakespeare while recuperating.

"How now, spirit, whither wander you?"

It seemed a whimsical thing for an Omni Tool to say. Puck also seemed like great company. At the time she'd had no idea whither she was wandering at all, but Puck had escorted her through her wanderings on the Extranet and had for years. One more way in which she was not alone. Puck was customized to a forest green.

She read up on Feros. Prothean ruins. A shady corporation. Geth.

Time flew as she studied, took notes, jumped from source to source, cross sources, survey studies, infrastructure, looting, marking a few interesting side articles about Prothean artifact museums and the rights to relics, social attitudes and legalities.

Liara came by, brought her a tray of food. Liara couldn't quite look at her and Lal's gaze softened, she sat back. Lal gestured to the curtain around her bed, and Liara drew it.

Lal motioned her in and whispered "I couldn't close that for myself. Thank you." She took Liara's hand and said "Tell me about your mother. Please?"

Liara looked at Commander Shepard…Lal…Cara…and was mentally dizzy. It cut through the grieving in a strange way, curiosity about humans, about this…person. Liara had her in her head but she had no right to her memories, her thoughts, the deep waves of whimsy and bright hope, cliffs of darkness and overcast storms that changed landscapes.

She wasn't asking as Commander Shepard.

Liara tried to go get a chair, but Lal held onto her hand and pulled her down by the side of her bed to sit. Lal said "Please. Stay. Quietly, we can talk. I want to know."

Liara looked at her and it seemed she did, and Liara could believe it, Lal's hunger for…everything and news of everything invested her eyes, with the background strain of physical pain and emotional stress.

Liara said "Well…I was…an awkward child. Shy."

Lal broke into a huge grin "I know this story."

Liara realized with a start that this was human humor. Not literal. She wasn't asking Liara not to tell her because she already knew the story, or saying her story was too boring to waste time on hearing. She was trying to empathize. Liara would have to learn. Liara said "My mother's life was glamorous, glittering. Either swarmed by attendees or sequestered in study. I still do not know why she chose to have a child that late in life. I did not seem to fit into her schedule. I was mostly with caretakers. I was not lonely, but she was a glittering whirlwind, I missed the excitement when she was gone. There was one day when I was…very small. She had brought me with her into her sanctum, her study, and I was allowed to walk around, expected to respect the space. I saw a beautiful sculpture that captured my attention, she seemed like the glittering whirlwind captured for all to see, to hold. The first thing outside my mother that gave me that feeling. I asked a silly question. 'What would happen if I took this away?' I vaguely wanted to know I was more important than that beautiful thing, that I would not get in trouble if I touched it or smudged it or it just was not there any longer, if that were somehow my fault. That she would still love me. She smiled at me and said "Little Wing, you can have it." It was…is priceless, I still have it, a bust of the Goddess from…well…that does not matter so much. She had an open alcove built into my room to hold this priceless sculpture. I did…take it away when I left…"

Lal said "It does matter so much. I want to hear about it, do you have pictures? I want to know more. I want to know about Protheans, our next mission is on Feros."

Liara said "What do you want to know about Protheans?"

Lal answered simply "Everything."

Lal listened to her talk about her mother, Liara's life, Protheans, for hours, using the thin bedding as tissues as they both cried and told stories, privacy in a curtain and Dr. Chakwas's discreet absence. Liara got tired of talking long before Lal got tired of listening. It was a lovely thing to be the focus of the whirlwind.

Dinner went cold.

Garrus came by twice to check on her, ashamed that he wanted to get close enough to eavesdrop.

oOoOoOoOoOo

Feron had a distinct lack of anything noteworthy that was Prothean, so unfortunately Liara had very little to contribute. She still tried occasionally. "This architecture style has been found on many planets. There was not a great deal of diversity in Prothean design at this time in their expansion."

Lal asked, carefully navigating the inadvisable skyway "Why is it that when I look up Prothean artifacts, I mostly see broken rocks, Liara?"

Garrus answered "Oh, I know that one. Asari were the first out into space. If you want to see real Prothean artifacts, now you need to go to Thessia."

Liara was uncomfortable. It was true. She said "Asari have been excellent caretakers."

Garrus nodded and said "That is true, so excellent that Turians aren't allowed on most of the religious sites, which happen to house the most valuable artifacts." He paused a moment and said thoughtfully "Maybe it's something about us only having three fingers. We're unreliable? Can't pick things up as well as you five-fingered guys? Talons will scratch the finish?"

Lal laughed but she was still preoccupied and would be for a while. She drove carefully and shot down targets according to the priority she'd established regarding their relative strengths and weaknesses.

This Mako was slightly twitchy and she wanted to adjust the carriage and the programming, but she felt Garrus might take that as criticism. Maybe she'd sneak down and make the alterations while he was on shore leave some day.

No. If she was going to be an adult, she should just mention something about it herself…but Garrus took so much pride…and she did not want to hurt his feelings. She could make do with what she had, it just tweaked her when she knew it could be incrementally better.

If she made the changes in secret, Garrus would notice and either put it back the way it was or wonder who was messing with his baby.

Garrus was near as earnest as Liara about his job and his work, and that's why she brought Liara and Garrus with her so often, certainly on the more critical missions. They got the job done. She felt safer, and although she was no more able to be herself, she experienced fewer assaults…fewer tweaks.

She'd learned that if she brought out Kaidan and Wrex, it was a blessing and a curse. She didn't have to worry about Kaidan looking at her longingly. Kaidan had done it once and Wrex had caught it. Wrex spent spare moments talking about human mating habits, making suggestions about ways Kaidan could get her attention…or realize she wasn't interested. It had put Kaidan at a baseline of being too embarrassed to look at her, and she…was grateful to Wrex for that.

Lal lent half an ear to Liara trying to defend her people and make absolutely clear that three fingers were not an issue, while Garrus laughed and Lal smiled, making notes to look up historical points brought up by an amused Turian needling a defensive and humorless Asari.

oOoOoOoOoOo

Lal thought one of the worst parts of the mission was the…smell…of the Thorian. She was proud of her team. Lal was learning to alter her humor, and she was better able as Shepard to use the excuse to tailor to her teammate, build a rapport. Liara's biotics were impressive. Garrus's rifle was irreplaceable. Strategically she also favored Tali on missions that would be heavy on Geth because of her hacking ability. So she had three team members she was most comfortable with, and that was progress.

She'd have no problem ordering Garrus to change the navigation programming and sensitivity of the guidance as Commander Shepard…but…she didn't want to.

This was a tiny thing, an insignificant thing, maybe…it could be a personal thing. Not a command imperative, but a request. She could build rapport?

She liked Garrus.

She liked him…a lot.

Things had gone well with Liara, maybe she could make a friend. Here she felt almost crushingly guilty.

What kind of friend can you make when you're lying about everything except your next strategic move?

Maybe…a strategic friend?

She paced in her cabin, talking out loud to herself, a theatrical habit. She rehearsed conversations, outcomes, impressions, hands making wide gestures.

She addressed the Universe in general. Unfortunately though she'd temporarily had a gallery of stuffed animals to address, now they were gone.

She stood her pillows up on their ends and shaped some folds, made it look like they had…lumpy faces and expressions of…well. Probably they were ill. They would still have to do. They did not look cheerful despite strategic leaning.

"Okay. So. You probably don't want to be here. This is demeaning to us all. But we go to conversation with the advisors we have, not the advisors we want."

"So…strategy in a military sense is clean. It involves people, but it involves people that have roles. I have the right to tell Garrus what to do with his rifle. I don't even have to tell him at this point, he just does it. He's good. He's adopted my strategies, codes and hand signals, and if he has a suggestion it is respectful. Unlike Wrex."

"Yes! You're right, Left Pillow. Yes, you need a better name. Respect is important. LP. That could also be for lumpy pillow, but that would not be distinctive, would it, right lumpy pillow? That's Right, Right Lumpy Pillow? Sorry. This is not going to work. You're Clarence. You're Persephone. No, I won't explain, look it up. That's insensitive because you don't have hands. I am sorry."

"Okay, so I can give him orders and he will take them, and that's because that's his training set. He volunteered for that. Unlike certain pillows upon whom I am enforcing my whimsy. I should just let him do his job, you say? Do not force him to smile? That is an excellent point."

"It's also very sad. So I can bark orders, Elcor Commander, all that. It is rehearsed. It's stylized. There's a script, a mission."

"So I'm good that that. That I get. But people…as people. Garrus as a person…I am the first person to be aware that everybody has hidden personality traits. My hiding is possibly….more extreme in execution. I hear you laughing Persephone. Yeah, that's fair. My hidden personality traits are boring in content. I live in a military world where extremity and 'being able to take it' are idealized. And I fear the disapprobation of a pillow. I see you smirk, Clarence."

"I really can't take much. I don't want to take it. I don't want to prove that I can take it. I am not extreme. I am not in the set of extreme. I am outside that set. In a little tiny fluffy bubble somewhere, alone, hoping not to collide with another harsher Venn Diagram set that likes to shove and swear."

"So what if I liked him, as a potential friend, or…a potential friend. Shut up. A woman that talks to pillows is not what he is after. No offense. I don't even think Turians can…I am not looking that up. This is about the Mako. Yes it is."

"Garrus is by all presentation, a hard core person. A kind, funny…hard core person. Who glows. I can't explain the glow. So why do I talk about it? Because you're pillows. You're not going to tell anybody, only I can hear you."

"So…maybe his kindness and humor are intentional, to blend in with my command style, which is casually humorous. Not at anybody's expense. No hazing, just camaraderie, lighten the mood, inspire the troops stuff. Freak out Liara. She's trying to adapt. I'm discovering that explaining humor is even funnier when faced with blue confusion. Garrus and I are both guilty. So we do have something in common besides mayhem. But I think he likes the mayhem an awful lot. I am…a means to an end person. Mayhem to an end? It has to have an end. I'm mixing metaphors. Badly. Stop. Is that a metaphor or an idiom or…this is why I have to practice talking. If I go out there and 'mayhem to an end' comes out of my mouth…we are all doomed."

"What? Yes…it is true that I have let Wrex cut Kaidan down because I don't want to do it myself. Doesn't that just make me resourceful? Or does that make me guilty of weakness of character and cowardice. Do not answer that. I know the answer. I'm a hypocrite."

"Garrus was holding my hand when I woke up screaming. He keeps glowing."

"Yes. I know the synesthesia glow means importance, but it usually fades once I figure it out. I have not figured him out. What, he is a person and not a problem? Tell that to my brain."

"Maybe I'm just crazy? Well, that would be a popular opinion. I can't blame you for having it. In a military sense…well…I have a track record. Of crazy things. That I've done."

"So. I'm crazy. But it works? For me? And only me. And I had better keep it to myself. Yeah."

"Commander Shepard. The First Human Spectre. Ambitions in life: Take down Saren, retire to a small cottage with a bezillion cats and stuffed animals. I'll bring you guys, you'll like it. Bake. Never. Talk. To. Anyone."

"Except you, of course you, we're friends. I need you guys."

"Fine. I'll talk to him about the Mako because it's a command decision. That is in the Venn Diagram of technical mentoring. Then I'm coming back here and reading for hours and you can't stop me. I'm making a vow. Unbreakable vow. I will meander all over the Extranet with no goal."

"I'm going."

oOoOoOoOoOo

She was trying to think of ways to bring up Mako alterations on her way down to talk to him, not visibly nervous because this was a Shepard thing and she'd categorized what the bounds were.

Garrus saw her coming, grateful to see she walked without a limp, no lingering damage from Noveria. She'd gritted her teeth and gotten them through Feros, and the worst thing had been the…smell.

The Thorian had not been a creature of light and water, but malignant lurking and corrupted servants. A description of the smell would not go in the report, but it was the thing that soaked into his hide, into his mind. Horror lurking in the dark, deep under the surface, with a smell that seemed to alert the brain that the mind was about to be lost. He had wondered while they'd shot down helpless servants how much time the Thorian needed to reach out and take a mind away from its owner. Had it been trying to link unseen into his mind? Shepard didn't want to talk about that. Shepard had not hesitated to walk into the dark.

When she started talking to him, she could tell immediately that he was preoccupied. Unfinished sentences seemed the same thing in human and Turian. Odd how things translated with emotional content and more than just the words. Some of her Extranet meandering would involve looking up the adaptations and theory of tuning translation devices to the human mind. This seemed beyond tension-breaking moments on missions, beyond his sympathizing with the pain she was in with her leg, this seemed a moment of personal reflection.

The Mako could wait.

She said quietly "Something on your mind?"

He considered discussing the mission, what was really on his mind, but he didn't want to seem to be tripped up on it. He could handle something smelling bad, it was hard to explain. Humans did not have Turian noses, it would come out as trite. Then he'd have to point out that he had a better sense of smell and that could be disastrous.

What would Commander Shepard be interested in talking about? Something had been bothering him…something less existential crisis. He spoke to her about Saleon.

Lal got very excited about procedure and plot, internally fascinated. Normally she would sit back and listen, but this was incredible. She asked him enthusiastically "This is fascinating. Did you alert hospitals, take genetic screening codes and ask them to look for patients requiring immune-suppressive treatments, looking for cases of rejection? I'm sure you snagged some recipients. Add in some forensic accounting and you had a net of cause and effect, and with the recipients dependent on medical care and losing faith in their surgeon…"

Garrus held perfect still.

Well. Yeah. If he'd thought of that he'd…

Oh shit.

Now he felt like…was…an idiot. He said lamely "Well…no. I questioned some of his employees…"

She frowned "So you alerted him that he was under investigation?" She was starting to get a very bad feeling about this.

Oh, Garrus. I hate to say it, but maybe C-Sec wasn't the right place for you.

Garrus said quietly "He…yes. He was alerted."

She corralled her enthusiasm, did not say 'So you had him under surveillance and you snatched him before he did anything shady, investigated all tracks, employees, recipients, maintenance personnel, supply records looking for specific drugs used for transplant?'

Garrus wanted something to explode as a distraction. The grenades were too far away. He said "They…well…he…got away in his ship with a lot of test subjects."

She stared at him, nodded slowly and said "All right. What happened?" This was a terrible story.

He replied, distress subharmonics squeaking, hopefully Wrex could not hear them from here "He got away. He's still out there."

She swallowed hard, seeing that this was unfinished business and not a cool war story. Garrus thought with his gun and with his heart and was not…well…all that sneaky. She was sneaky. She could help. She asked "Do you know where he is now?"

Garrus nodded, and said "I have done some digging." Internally kicking himself for not being creative enough, abashed to be telling her, but also inspired that she knew how to get things done. This was why he followed her.

He transferred the code to Puck and she checked it out. She told him she'd do what she could to get him brought in.

He said lamely "I'd like to go…"

She looked at him closely and said "We've got more important things to do. You're better than that, Garrus."

He thought 'No. No, I'm really not.'

She looked at him more closely and said "I can have him brought in, with what you've said, we can go back and get all the evidence we need. We'll track down employees, donors and those who bought organs. We need to know their methods, we need to know what happened, we'll set a net and bring them in. Bring them all in. With what you just gave me, we have everything we need for a court case. This could clean up the Citadel, crack down on how donors access the black market. You should be proud."

He was not proud. Garrus touched his tongue to a point of a tooth and said "Yes, Commander. Thank you."

She thought this was not a good time to bring up the Mako. Maybe later.

Garrus would really like one of those grenades.

oOoOoOoOoOo

She enjoyed this side project. She split her attention between Saleon and what they were off into next. She was going to help Wrex pick up his hat. She talked to Anderson, made some calls to the medical outlets on the Citadel and also alerts to the main medical facilities on Council planets. There had been several cases of organ rejection, some resulting in deaths. Samples were plentiful for genetic testing, enough evidence was gathered and the Alliance stormed his ship, gassed the entire place ahead of time, brought him in for trial.

Wrex got his hat.

She presented the entire file to Garrus, the ongoing investigation revealing black market infrastructure on several worlds and the Citadel.

Garrus smiled and said "That's amazing, Commander. Thank you for your help."

But he didn't seem happy about it. She wondered why.

He wondered why she dragged a moronic Turian with her anywhere, and decided not to tell any more 'the big one that got away' stories.

Clarence and Persephone heard all about it when Garrus seemed unwilling to discuss it. At least they were proud of her, she could tell.

She never did mention the Mako to him. He seemed a little stressed.


	4. Chapter 4

After Virmire Lal existed in functional shock. There was work to be done, reports to send. She spent hours crafting a message to Ashley's family members, but much of that time was spent staring at nothing, her mind spinning in conscious and unconscious calculation and contemplation. Ringing in the back of her mind was the possibility that the Council had tried to get her and her crew killed. The Council's decision to send them to Virmire was either intentional homicide or ignorance. Both were dangerous. That choice had cost Ashley's life. She scoured her mind trying to remember everything she could about Ashley, not wanting to be trite or topical. "Your sister loved poetry" was a phrase she wrote in a daze and then erased, starting to cry.

They know she loved poetry.

Don't tell them what they know.

Lal's mother and father did not have words, but were present.

She ended up reading condolence letters that had been written throughout history. It was not cathartic or inspirational. She was numb and inadequate to the task.

She wrote words, and they blurred, and she erased them.

Ashley deserved better.

Liara came to check on her, apprehensive from the look on her face and her voice "I don't want to intrude…"

Lal said "You aren't intruding. What do you need?" You are intruding. I don't have anything to give.

Liara said "Garrus thought…it's a tradition to have a send off…between comrades, at least in Turian tradition. Whether or not Ashley would have liked it, he's declared her an honorary Turian for today. It's in the mess. People are gathering."

Lal nodded and said "Of course." She smiled, or tried to. It felt like a brittle stretch of her lips, likely looking less like a smile and more like a rictus. She said "I'll be right there. Thank you."

Liara hesitated, had no idea what to say. She left after giving a brief nod. Lal had turned her head away.

It wasn't just a Turian tradition. It was a human tradition as well. Lal would prefer…she closed her eyes and said sorry again.

'Ashley, I wish I could celebrate, I wish I could laugh at the dark the way I'm supposed to, but all I am is sorry.'

No voice answered. She hadn't earned Ashley's voice. She'd only been unable to prevent her death. She had only earned the empty space where Ashley had once been.

Her parents were silent again, but it felt like their hands were on her shoulders. No matter how many times she'd gone through deaths of comrades, she had no greater or lesser insight, no wiser words, only pain.

She intellectually understood the defiance inherent in the proposed celebration, had been to many, but she could not produce defiance. She would pretend to, but the conviction she had as Commander Shepard to get things done on a battlefield failed her in this situation, because she felt that pain was the correct response, the most honest response. She would be seen as being in pain, she would not be disrespectful.

Often, in cases like this, she wondered if everyone were pretending or if it was just her. She was not a defiant person, she did not swear, she did not taunt, she respected her enemy. Her enemies were death and suffering. Death always won. Suffering could only be mitigated. They had both been here before she had been born and would be here long after she died. They were Eternal. She was not.

Her parents had not sworn, and she retained the habit she'd gotten from them, a surprised "Oh" as her go-to interjection. She'd never been exposed to swearing on Mindoir except in literature or theater. She'd looked up words she did not know. They did not belong to her, as foreign as the vocabulary in Shakespeare. She wouldn't have said 'fuck' any more than she'd have said ''Zounds.' 'Zounds had apparently been pretty inflammatory in its day. Shakespeare had been an irreverent potty mouth.

Fuck became more familiar with time, once she'd determined context and usage. 'Zounds never did.

Introduced later in her life, swearing had seemed intellectually to be desensitizing, defiance as insulation. Yes, she was too literal, she knew…but after she'd come to that conclusion, she knew she did not wish to be desensitized. Did not want insulation that was composed of ultimately meaningless syllables intended to offend. More Shakespeare came to mind. 'Foul words is but foul wind, and foul wind is but foul breath, and foul breath is noisome.'

Still, some people really needed some noisome in their day, in their style, and she used swears when she needed their emphasis to convince minds not like hers to follow her. In that context they were ordnance.

If she tried to talk to anybody about this she knew she would be told she was overthinking it. Unfortunately for them she had also decided that 'overthinking' was a misnomer. She didn't even think it was really possible. The risk was poorly executed thinking. She wasn't wrong about what swears were, she used or did not use them appropriately. She just did not think anybody else cared. She cared…about everything. She also did not think that was a problem. Only poorly executed caring would be a problem.

She'd adapted by swearing just enough and shutting up about how much she was thinking.

She thought she was right. She thought people emotionally manipulated themselves with defiant speech, and although she did not underestimate the power of morale, she was realistic about its application. Every race with a verbal tradition seemed to have a tradition of swearing. Even Liara swore by the Goddess. It mattered. She applied it for morale purposes. It worked. Just like any other ordnance, it should be respected and understood, stored properly and thought about very carefully, with aim and foresight, before use.

Lal had humility and caution, considered them mental stances that resulted in balance the way proper limb strength and placement would provide balance in a fight. Get too weak or too arrogant, and that stance, that balance, would be overset. She'd seen…a lot of people overset. She herself had purposely overset several targets, physically and emotionally. She'd seen people die in swearing rages, when staying in cover would have preserved lives.

One more debate to be rehashed in an empty room to pillow judges.

Not something to be mentioned to Ashley's family or her crew.

Ashley, I'm so sorry. You deserved better.

She wrote what she could, from her heart, and sent the notifications. It was not defiant, because Lal honored the pain. It was not inspirational. It was informative and respectful, not trying to force an emotion on the reader. What mattered was Ashley's family's connection to Ashley, not what Commander Shepard thought of her. She made clear Ashley had been respected in life and would be honored in death. Ashley had died, and now her family would suffer.

As she opened the door to her quarters the sound of raucous voices made her give a ghost of a smile that she tried to invigorate into appropriate mirth. It was familiar. It was a ritual, and one that if she were absent, it would be an insult to Ashley and to every person still alive here who put their life on the line, imagining glasses lifted and stories told. They all deserved better than the pain she had to offer.

She didn't drink alcohol, and in the past that had turned into an obnoxious pattern. People noticed if she had something not recognizably alcoholic. To avoid a philosophical discussion regarding the effects of alcohol, she'd say she just didn't like the taste. Then she'd be told she hadn't tried the right drink yet and it would turn into a group game, trying to find her something she liked. She'd learned to get a glass of vodka on ice. She would dump it out and replace it with water from the bathroom.

She got her faux vodka. She sat down and listened to Wrex tell stories. He'd been to…how many…of these celebrations and memorials? She found herself rallying the wisps of curiosity, listening to his stories, the history and symmetry of a soldier's life through centuries and across species.

She embraced the weird of Ashley being honored by a Krogan and a Turian and a Quarian. Everyone did what they could to solidify team. The people in this room knew who their real enemies were. Ashley had known it, she'd acted it. She'd helped save and preserve the lives of each of them. She was brave. She was poetry and opinions and a strong arm and good aim.

She couldn't use the word 'was' yet.

Liara sat by Lal and they were a small vortex of quiet in the loud, gesticulating, laughing crowd. Lal laughed, not as loudly as she could, but more loudly than she wanted to. She toasted and drank, and it was water. She was separate from the group trance that progressed from sober to drunk. She wanted to cry. Effort was required to resist, clenched jaw and scratchy eyes.

The celebration wore her down. She was always edgy in crowds. It wasn't just the social strain. It wore down her intellect; too much input, too many facial expressions to parse, too many interactions to note. She couldn't shut off the analysis. A familiar sense of being a balloon with a tiny leak persisted. She wouldn't pop, she would just…deflate…slowly and inexorably. She hadn't been all that inflated to begin with, and she could not counter the slow bleed of energy or the disappointment in herself. She felt raw and scraped, moving slowly and carefully, trying not to existentially or physically wince. She tried to give the right responses, but this was one of the times she felt hypocritical, a truly poor actor when the best was required, her lines forgotten, no talent for improvisation. She deferred telling her own stories because she did not trust her voice.

Then Garrus was behind her, hand on her shoulder, saying loudly "C'mere, Shepard!" She was shocked by the tone of his voice, drunk, something she'd never heard from him before. She froze. Liara nudged her and Lal stared at Garrus, who gave her a signal. Something suited to the battlefield, something they'd traded. Something urgent. His motions were drunken and insistent but his eyes were clear and concerned. She suddenly desperately wanted to follow, whatever his reason. Garrus waved away objections with a dismissive, drunken growl, insisted on taking her arm, pulling her up and grabbing her drink. He pushed her, in front of him, out of the room to boos and a patter of snacks being thrown at them in protest for taking Shepard away, bouncing off Garrus's armor, hitting the floor. Garrus led her back clumsily into the battery, out of people's view, behind one of the heavy armatures. No matter what got her here, she immediately felt the psychic relief of being away from scrutiny. At least now only one person was watching, and that person was Garrus, and that was…strange but okay.

Garrus looked at her, hefted her glass, regained the fluid grace of his obviously not-drunk carriage and said informatively "This is water."

She looked at him helplessly, begging to be swallowed up by the deck.

He shook his head and said "It's okay. It's okay. You just…looked like you needed to get the hell out of there."

She closed her eyes and sighed and said "I'm sorry, Garrus…"

He shook his head and said "No. Don't apologize. It's for Ashley. You did it for Ashley, you're wrecked. You have the right to be wrecked. I just…look, humans don't have the sense of smell that Wrex or I or even Tali have with her sensor array…and Wrex would give you hell until the end of time. You attract curiosity."

They both thought simultaneously 'That's an understatement…'

Garrus continued "I was afraid if I didn't do something, Wrex would make an issue. He looked at your glass twice and was starting to squint. You know he can't think without making a face. Everybody wants to have a Shepard story. He'd tell the story of how Commander Shepard thought she could fool him into thinking she was drinking vodka long after we're gone. And I don't want that to happen. He might turn it into a dare or try to force you to drink. And you might do it because…you're you. But you deserve better."

It had never occurred to her that the…smell…

It should have.

Garrus said "Look, in the future just…get some of the alcohol you drink on your collar or hair, close to your mouth, splash some on the outside of the glass and get some on your hands. Before you pour it out, rinse your mouth with it for about a minute. C-Sec agents have to avoid drinking with informants and people who…don't know they're informants. You might also consider making an appropriate face to taking a slug of hard alcohol compared to sipping water." He asked solicitously "You don't like to drink?"

It was all bizarre, and obvious that she didn't, obvious that he knew that, but she was dazed and said simply "People don't seem to accept that as a valid life choice."

He tilted his head and said "Yeah, well, some people, and in particular one observant, squinty and drunken Krogan can be assholes. Don't worry about it. He gives you trouble, I'll shoot him."

She smiled and said "Then we'll have to have another memorial where I pretend to drink."

He said as an intended joke "You can sit near me. I'll protect you." It did not come out as a joke, the scratching of his subvocals rang in his ears in the silence following. It was inappropriate, and he really did not care. It felt right, looking at her face, hearing the wobble in her voice. He wasn't entirely sober, but he wasn't entirely drunk. He was defiant and waited, almost wanted her to push back, to transform her vulnerability into something else, but she didn't push back.

She swallowed, hard, against the sudden blocked lump in her throat. As she looked at him he was washed in a haze of glowing light, and she did not have the energy to wonder why or wonder how, feeling the exhaustion and pain, comprehending the permission to feel both.

He looked down at the woman in front of him, 'protect you' in her ears and his throat. He meant it, was privileged to be here, with her. He put down their drinks carefully and on an irresistible impulse pulled her into something he'd seen humans do, something Liara did; a hug. She was tiny, fragile, all those things she overcame in order to command. He was so far out of bounds with this. His heart was hammering and he didn't know if he deserved to be shoved away, but she leaned into him and began to cry, quiet sobs that caused his arms to tighten around her, from comforting to protective, making absolutely certain that nobody could see. She was water and tears, and in this moment crystallized as special, not only brilliant, not only brave, but transparently so, with none of the personal bluster that protected the rest of them.

It had been his idea for the memorial. He was vindicated professionally by the celebrating crowd and in a personal way conflicted but still proud. She'd be less exposed if she'd been able to stay in her quarters and grieve privately…but then she wouldn't be here, trusting him with her tears. It didn't mean less that she had to, that she needed him, it meant more.

Lal held onto him and was held onto, until the trembling in her limbs ended. He managed to get her back to her cabin without fuss, making it look like he was leaning on her. After she was in, he slid down to the floor, theoretically too drunk to move, but strategically a barrier to make sure nobody else would try to get into her cabin.

He was able to hear the stories from here, and he toasted to Ashley every time.

oOoOoOoOoOo

Lal was currently in her cabin, wondering if Anderson hadn't contacted her, would she have hijacked the Normandy on her own?

Taken another craft?

She was considering her temperament options. Being a dutiful person had suited her career in the Alliance, but she wasn't in the Alliance any more. She needed to consider new strategies.

Ship stealing strategies.

That usually meant end game sacrifices.

She wasn't yet ready for the end game and that was the issue here, because beyond Saren, there were Reapers and he was only one pawn.

So…was this her end game sacrifice? Potentially? Should she accept it as a definite, strategically lean into it? She'd made the choice to mutiny sitting in Flux, and now she was processing why. What it meant, beyond the click of strategic tumblers that unlocked a decision, she could step through the door and see what the room held.

Possibly a lot of hubris.

She wanted more backup, more than they'd had on Virmire, knowing what they faced. Saren, Krogan, Geth. Lots of them.

If it was end game, she was all in. Saren, the Krogan and the Geth were all indoctrinated. She was not.

She was interrupted by a chime at her door.

She paused a moment, because she was so unaccustomed to the sound interrupting her pacing frenzies. She hadn't gotten to actually formulating a solid strategy, and although her pillows were…propped up…Clarence and Persephone were not an egregious giveaway. Just a cause for vague guilt.

They were all about to potentially die. Whoever was on the other side of the door was welcome to her time.

"Come."

Garrus walked in, vaguely disappointed that it had been that easy. He'd only ever seen Liara in here, the night of Ashley's death, and then for approximately one minute. Liara and Shepard had some sort of bond he could never figure out, silences that spoke and eye contact. No wonder, they'd shared minds a few times. It seemed viciously unfair that Turians could not do that.

She looked at him, eyebrow raised "Yes? Vakarian? What can I do for you?"

He stepped in and then said "I…well…I'm not sure I thought that far." The sustained raised brow made him say "No, really. I just wanted the courage to knock on your door. I was convinced you wouldn't answer."

She, having considered herself a consummate coward, leaving the socializing to people who valued such things…asked to clarify "On a scale of 1-10, how much courage?" 

He smiled and said warmly "Maybe a 7. You're not a thresher maw."

She indicated the room and said "No, and as lairs go, it's not all that impressive."

He pointed to a seat, asking permission to sit, and she nodded. He said "So getting in and sitting down wasn't that hard. I'm sorry I haven't done it before."

In her eyes he was still invested with a soft glow, and she'd gotten so used to it that it was just…Garrus. Crowded in her mind with so many other strange things she had to deal with had made it a back burner reality, some artifact in her brain. There were Reapers and Mass Effect gates and a glowing Turian. It had gained him advantages. She was always curious about what he might say next. She was more likely to include him in teams. She knew he was coming with her. No doubt everyone else knew it.

She was unlikely to ever let him know that he glowed. It resulted in favoritism, a metaphoric glow that others could see and could measure. Not to say he hadn't earned it. At this point she considered it feedback, a reminder that she'd seen it in him the first time she'd met him by the time he'd said the word "Saren" and the color was now a constant, backed up not only by intuition but experience. She had made him second in command. Most tellingly, he'd been able to drag her drunkenly out of a room and nobody, including her, had been able to see that as anything but perfectly normal Garrus behavior. He was able to create his own exceptions where she was concerned, this visit just one more expression of that.

He'd carried her off Noveria.

She owed him her life.

Unknown to him, she owed him for the hundreds of little ways that as her second in command he had taken on the mantle so completely he'd protected her physically and emotionally from attack. It should be known to him.

She sat down, making clear that he was welcome and said "I owe you. I can't tell you how much."

He smiled and said "Can't or won't?"

She ducked her head and said "Both."

He nodded and said in a drawl "Yeaaaah. I thought so. So what do you owe me?"

She laughed "I just said I can't tell you that."

He tilted his head and cajoled "Not all of it, but some of it. I'm sure you can. Here, let me start. I owe you, Shepard. I'd love to say you only honed a few skills that already existed. Let me confess something here. Saleon…I wanted to kill him myself."

She flinched and looked at him to see if he was teasing, but he was serious, blue eyes reflecting solemnity and the extent of that sentiment. He waited to see if she would ask a question, but she didn't. He continued "You took that case, expanded on the possibilities of investigation, involved several agencies, got them to work together…brought him in, exposed a network…I see it as something I could have done if my brain had been more engaged than my ego. If I hadn't been blinded to potential avenues by wanting to make the collar personally, get the credit, vindicate myself."

She didn't believe it. This…side…or facet of Garrus from his own mouth seemed implausible. Vengeful. Like identifying a slight bitterness that enhanced a recipe, discovering the secret ingredient was arsenic.

She swallowed hard, keeping her objections and disbelief to herself. He was suddenly on the other side of a hard-coded divide. She fought people that had guns pointed at her. She did not murder. She did not murder in cold blood.

You're a hypocrite, Lal. You have likely killed more people than Garrus. He spent years in C-Sec doing paperwork.

She pushed it aside, something to talk about, think about later. There might not be a later for either of them. She was about to order him to kill again.

Kill…not…murder.

He was looking at her, the lull in the conversation a throwback to awkwardness they'd experienced in different iterations through time. There were times when he knew her mind was whirling in all directions but her eyes demanded discipline. He couldn't explain it, he just…knew it…from all the times expressions just like this had revealed that she had been thinking, hard, when it appeared she wasn't.

She smiled at him and combined distraction, inspiration and curiosity "So we win this thing and I go to jail for treason. What do you do?" She meant…what will you do next for your own career?

He heard only one pathway after that "Break you out or end up joining you there."

She warmed to the teasing and said "Adjacent cells?"

He shrugged and said "It might be an 8/10 on the courage scale, but I am stupid enough to do it."

Who she was and who she pretended to be both laughed hard at that. She laughed until she snorted. Then she laughed harder and his facial expression went from alarm to fascination to sympathetic involuntary huffs of laughter and then he was unable to stop himself.

He watched her laugh, listened and was so glad he'd tried to get in and she allowed it. He said after they'd calmed down…mostly…she still started giggling in little spurts for a bit…"I brought something." He set out a bottle of alcohol for himself to her raised brow, and then he presented her ceremoniously with a bottle of water. "I think I'm going to go back to C-Sec. Whatever change this mission brings about, and I think we're going to live, Commander, I'm going to go back to C-Sec to fix some mistakes I made, defend some mistakes I didn't make. There are cases I want to re-open, procedures I want to challenge, procedures I want to establish. Before I was despairing, now I'm…it's your influence…looking forward to it."

She smiled and opened her bottle of water, took a sip "Your father would like that a lot."

He said quietly "That's part of it. I'm hoping I've learned how to make a difference, deal with criticism and obstacles with grace and creativity…"

She interjected "…get beat up for doing it and have your command taken from you…"

He gasped comically and said "Wait…that's what happened before, isn't it? Maybe I was already doing it!"

She clinked her bottle against his "Garrus, whoever has you under their command, whatever command you aspire to reach, I will always want to have your back the same way you have had mine. If you want to re-enter the Spectre program…you know, causing your father yet another heart attack…I would sponsor you. Whatever I can do for you." She thought of saying 'you know, if I'm alive…' but she preferred his tone of confidence. "You've earned yourself a pocket Spectre. And if you ever want a bunk on any ship I command, all you ever have to do is ask. I think you deserve your own command. I do not want to hold you back. You are the best second in command I've had, and that means you'd make someone else the best commander they've ever had. Yeah, I owe you my life and I couldn't get this done without you…but I will tell you something…you are the first…friend…I have had..." She said it but couldn't explain, didn't want to qualify about Liara being by accident…she should probably…she couldn't. She just trailed off as though she could have qualified it. Cowardly again. He'd probably figured out she had no real friends and this was not about unloading on him. He was the first friend she had wanted to make, the first friend that had navigated her strange behavior, made her feel like what secrets she kept weren't important to him.

Plus he glowed, and she liked his voice, and despite every single reason she had against thinking that way, she wanted him close. She didn't want him to leave. Suddenly she wanted to cry and she could feel the prickly sensation of potential tears flush her eyes.

Garrus looked at her face and then looked away, gave her a moment to compose herself. He'd learned to see her without appearing to see. He busied himself with opening his bottle, knowing that she wouldn't take it as an insult, just as a moment to take a breath. He never could figure her exactly out, she was a patchwork mess of motivation and custom, but he heard the heart-warmed truth. That's why he was able to knock on her door. Anybody else could have gotten in, but nobody else would have made her cry.

Congratulations, Vakarian, you made Commander Shepard cry.

Yeah, it mattered to him. He impulsively wanted to ask for that berth, right now. There was nowhere else he wanted to be. That, however, seemed to require a 9/10 on the courage scale. He let the moment pass, took a sip of ale and then said "You've got yourself a pocket Turian. Wherever I land, I'm going to hold you to that friend thing."


	5. Chapter 5

Saren was dead and Garrus was swamped with offers. As a companion of the 'Savior of the Citadel' he was front and center in the fight to make the Hierarchy relevant. He was enjoying that Councilor Sparatus was in a defensive splutter. Sparatus would happily put Garrus in a jettison capsule and lose the coordinates, but he would be the primary suspect in Garrus's murder. His father had not approved of Garrus taking off with a human Spectre, but now he was pride and grandfathered-in approval. Tensir Vakarian would not allow any loss of coordinates.

Sparatus knew and Garrus knew that he was the only Turian that had been present through every discussion in person that Shepard had with the Council. Beyond that Garrus was privy to Shepard's accounts of the contents of their directives and orders. Garrus was aware of the greatest failing in Sparatus's career. If Garrus had anything to say about it, he'd dig up more. Turians deserved better.

The Vakarian name, recent events, personal reputation, military service and C-Sec service made Garrus neon-bright visible. Garrus considered his options, which included using his newly found fame and frustration with Shepard's reception to accuse the Council of everything he wanted to accuse them of…conspiracy to deny the case against Saren, condemning Ashley Williams to death and damning Shepard with faint praise…

Shepard herself was absent from the frenzy of the rebuilding of the Citadel and the political structure. She did not do live interviews or appearances. She deferred all issues to Anderson, the new human Councilor, only answered certain questions and geared every opportunity to speak into asking people to work together, honor those who had given their lives, and prepare for a coming fight. She was calm and quiet enough to bore most people. She no doubt liked it that way. He wished he could ask her.

He probably could, but the immediacy of the end of their potential lives had passed, and the courage to knock on her door faded when she did not knock on his.

He knew she had faith in him. She'd expressed that she wanted him to get his own command, and he wanted that for himself as well as to repay her faith in him. He saw so much wrong with the Hierarchy, C-Sec, the Council in general and the Turian Councilor specifically, and at this moment in history he could do something about it. He had the ear of the media, support of many individuals in the military and C-Sec, if not support of all of their leaders. He had his father's good opinion because the ends justified the means and now his son was being sensible and looking after his own people, his own future.

He wanted to look out for Turian interests, protect them in the inevitable storm, and it seemed that in this moment in history, his people might look after him as well. Even if they didn't, even if they disagreed, he'd learned from Shepard to persevere, to not take it personally, and to keep the goal in mind, not the obstacle. He owed it to her to step out of her shadow, fight his own fight, lead and make changes from the inside of the Citadel's most ossified political structures.

He was making inroads on sorting through his personal ambitions, ultimate goals and how that would align with the offers he'd gotten. No thanks to some of them. He would not be a spokesman for Carnifex. He would not be a consultant on the next Blasto film.

He had gotten an Omni Tool alert from Shepard. "Hypothetically speaking, given three dream jobs, Executor, Councilor or Spectre, which would you want?"

He had smiled, assumed it was a joke and answered "I love the sound of Executor Vakarian." He did, it's just that mostly he liked the sound of Not-Executor-Pallin.

He had hoped it would lead into a conversation with her. He wanted to talk to her. Ideally he'd like to see her. He checked his Omni Tool frequently, looking for missed follow up alerts, and he was disappointed when he never heard back from her.

Straighten your fringe, Vakarian. She has more important things to do.

oOoOoOoOoOo

About a week and a half later he got a visit from Councilor Anderson. Garrus stared at him for a moment until Anderson said "Pardon me for intruding. If you aren't busy, may I come in?"

Startled and stepping back quickly, door banging out of his grip and then caught before it hit Anderson in the face, Garrus said "Not at all, please. Sorry about that. Come in."

Anderson admired his modest apartment before displaying an Omni Tool screen that said in Turian script "Is this place potentially bugged?"

Garrus shook his head and said "People have tried. I have caught a few. I leave them in place and play Elcor opera into them for a while. Right now I am pretty sure you're clear, but if you're worried…" Garrus set up a local field centered around his Omni Tool, a Mass Effect dome and sound generator. Inside would be silent, outside would…not be. "Don't step outside this perimeter if you value your ears. What brings you here?"

Anderson looked at the bright circle of blue on the ground and then redirected his attention back to Garrus. "Shepard asked me to talk to you. She said to tell you she'd be here herself, but she doesn't want her current questionable status to affect your prospects."

That made Garrus angry, but he nodded with a slight jut of his jaw, seeing no point in arguing it with Anderson. Wait. He did. He'd argue it with anybody. "I suppose that's just as well, if she were here and said that to me, I'd have to argue with her. I have only ever benefited from association with her, and I believe that to be a truth that won't respond to public opinion."

Anderson smiled and said "Good. I'm glad to hear it. We need more truths that don't respond to or manipulate public opinion. She is, in her words, being cautious. She also thought you might say something like that and told me to tell you to pipe down, but I believe I will not need to do that."

Garrus snorted a laugh and leaned back more comfortably in his chair. It was kind of like a conversation with her, and he was flattered she was thinking of him. Enough to involve the Earth Councilor on a stealth mission. More than enough to make Garrus realize how much her opinion mattered, how much he missed her. It was hero worship, sure, but all good Turians were raised to appreciate hero worship. It wasn't just her as a hero. It was her. Well, if he was in deep, it was for a good cause. The best cause.

Anderson said "First, let me convey my personal thanks for what you've done, interviews where you have supported her and my addition to the Council. It makes a difference to hear that in a voice that isn't human. Someone that risked their life along with her against the Council's orders. Shepard said you were interested in the position of Executor."

Garrus was surprised. "Well, yeah, she asked me in the middle of the night what my dream job was and I thought Executor Vakarian would be the most spiteful…"

Anderson chuckled and said "Do you want it or not?"

Garrus sat forward and said "What? Do I want what? You can't…"

Anderson tilted his head and said "I believe I can. We can. If you want it. She wanted me to clarify, to make sure you didn't want Spectre or Councilor…" Anderson grinned again "She seems adamant about making sure you land on both feet. She said 'anybody's feet he wants to land on, Sparatus, Pallin, there should be two empty Spectre spots…'"

Garrus laughed and thought about it more seriously "So she's working on the Spectre and Councilor plans?"

Anderson nodded "Yes. Pallin is the easiest, and I can outline that right now, the rest might take a little while, but Spectre would be the second easiest, Councilor hardest, but not impossible. I could use you on the Council."

Garrus's brow plates drew tight together "She's serious."

Anderson said "Yes. She's serious."

Garrus asked Anderson "And you're serious?"

Anderson nodded and said "I am. Pallin has lost a great deal of support. C-Sec is being restructured after the attack. There is loss of life from those who died in the attack, attrition from those who are disillusioned with their leadership in the face of our accounts of the Council's orders and C-Sec's inability to enforce an investigation. They could use the morale and confidence boost of you being in charge. It would be best for the Citadel, best for Turians, best for the Hierarchy, she thinks. She wants to be sure it's best for you. She said you have some reform ambitions. I believe they're needed. She believes that if we bring private pressure to bear, we can get Pallin to resign and give the position to you. As straight arrow as Pallin claims to be, he is still complicit in Council orders to shut down your investigation into Saren. If you were to…push on that in media interviews…you could bring him down that way. She'd prefer that it be handled privately. In her view there is no reason to further shake confidence in C-Sec with a scandal. No reason to undermine what he accomplished with his service. He could agree to a changing of the guard, done honorably, retire to Palaven with a large pension. You provide the private pressure and the public praise for stepping down and the opportunity to serve yourself. He keeps his clan markings. Sparatus would be helpless to disagree without implicating himself. There would be separation between the executive and enforcement branches of the Citadel, and that would be for the greater good."

Garrus swallowed hard and tried to process…she was being dragged through all the mud possible, accent on downplaying the Geth and Saren's relationship to Reapers. She had her own career to consider and she'd spent…a lot of time trying to get him what she thought he wanted.

Anderson continued "She's done…a lot of research, on all three potential paths. I don't know where she got it, but she's got dossiers on Pallin, Sparatus, people who could influence Spectre assignment and training…I only skimmed it. She's promised a separate package for me focusing on Councilors and advisors, and I am looking forward to that. I don't have a week to read and she gave me the main points verbally. She wants you to have options. I agree with her. I could offer you a job immediately, but it's unlikely you would retain as much Turian support if you accepted. She believes if you leverage the good will you've earned, your military and C-Sec record and your station in the Hierarchy you can represent the Turians who will no longer listen to the Council blindly, who deserve information and representation. The Spectre path would be more difficult than Executor. She believes it could waste political capital, result in your application being stalled, more treacherous and likely to get you killed to silence you. It is certainly deadly enough in its own right. If you want that path she and I would support and sponsor you and I would do my best to oversee your candidacy. She'd love to see you as a Councilor. That might still be possible if you jump from Executor to Councilor. She has a plan for that as well. She's thought a lot about you, Vakarian."

In a flash of insight that he kept to himself, Garrus knew exactly where she'd gotten dossiers. She had code from Vigil that gave her control over the Citadel's tactical systems. Of course she'd be able to gain access to Citadel files. He'd always admired her hacking ability. As an Engineer she had never needed his technical assistance. Just his rifle. She must be appreciating the irony that keeping her grounded on the Citadel gave her plenty of time to gather as much information as she wanted. He suddenly felt much, much better about her political twilight state. Once again she'd changed in a blink from helpless, fey and delicate human to someone to be feared. He asked impulsively "How is she? She…I get she doesn't want to be associated…but is she okay?"

Anderson tilted his head and said "Son, read all of these documents, and you let me know if you think there's a damned thing wrong with her."

Garrus grinned and said "Yes sir."

oOoOoOoOoOo

Garrus spent days looking over her research, conclusions, carefully taped paths and strategies it would take for him to become Executor, Spectre or Councilor.

He swallowed a lot, stared a lot, and saw that it was not only possible, but probable with the way she framed arguments and outcomes.

He swore a great deal. Not only that she had this information, but the content of that information, pressure points and weaknesses, personal and political, of the Councilors. Alliances and agendas were identified and backlit, broken down to their purposes.

He wanted, so often, to send her a message, but what was he going to say?

"Thank you for violating all the laws in existence regarding privacy on my behalf?"

"Thanks for the illegal dossiers, Shep!"

No. No, he would not be sending that, or saying that. He got used to having his mouth go dry because his jaw had dropped and stayed that way for too long.

Pallin would be easy to remove from office. He wasn't a bad man, but he had definitely been influenced by the Council, and not only in the case of the Reapers. There were too many hints of case suppression and favoritism, too many sign offs on the word of Councilor Sparatus against good investigative work of corruption. Garrus progressed from dry mouthed awe to sharpened hunger for the kill.

Damned right Turians deserved better. With this…he could get it for them and for himself.

oOoOoOoOoOo

Fully prepped with Shepard's findings, it took Garrus only 45 minutes of conversation with Pallin before Pallin conceded the title of Executor and set a date of orderly turnover of power to Garrus. Pallin thanked Garrus for his discretion and personally apologized for his shortness of sight. He seemed to genuinely regret his bad calls and was willing if not eager to retire to Palaven, with hopes to see the Citadel recover.

Garrus gave him a list of other C-Sec agents who would be best advised to retire before the turnover was announced, giving several of the implicated old guard a chance to take an honorable pension rather than be drawn up with charges once new management took over. Pallin agreed that as he had been complicit in their cooperation, he would take responsibility for convincing them to vacate.

They both agreed on an anesthetized and surgical approach to this, rather than a bloody wrangle. Pallin was true to his word. Garrus inherited a newly-purged C-Sec and was able to immediately begin crafting new policy, hiring requirements and checks on power.

A lot of old guard beyond those advised to retired. New recruits from Turian, human and Asari applicants looking for new opportunities more than made up for it.

oOoOoOoOoOo

Shepard was cleared of 'wrongdoing' based on the ends justifying the means, Anderson's insistence and the fact that the Councilors were trying to wage a war against the truth and were slowly losing ground. The Normandy was repopulated with her crew, who had gratifyingly all stood behind her for the months of her suspended status.

It pained her, more than she wanted to admit, to not add Garrus Vakarian to the roster, but he was now Executor Vakarian and no longer available. The fact that she'd gained two highly influential political footholds in Anderson and Garrus made her very happy professionally.

Personally this was a slow seeping wound and she was going to have to heal and give no sign. Going over the roster made it sting. No blood in the water, Lal. Be happy for him. You worked hard…yes, it was all fun and you cackled, but work nonetheless…getting him where he is.

She had had…so much fun…with her hacker's paradise extended shore leave that getting back onto the ship was not as exciting as it should be in theory, but it was time to get back to work.

She'd baked and hacked for months now and it was the end of her involuntary vacation.

She'd watched romance films, read romance novels, watched every cooking show, ordered from every takeout menu and bakery she could find, avoided all human and non-human contact except for Anderson. No more dancing and singing in the kitchen holding a spoon as an improvised microphone.

She kept to tradition, relived the story of Saren with Hale, who was now stately, graying and more likely to lean up against the console screen for the warmth and sleep. So she took pictures of fuzzy cat wall and smiled.

"It's gonna be great, Hale, you'll see. I'll make you proud."

When it was finally safe to come out and not wreck the new Executor's glowing reputation, she found she really did want to talk to him. She was going to have to toughen back up, or at least look that way. She was nervous. But it was Garrus. She was nervous happy.

Time to go be Shepard again. She sent Garrus an Omni Tool alert.

"Congratulations on your new job."

"Congratulations on your old job."

That went well. She smiled and it was an hour before she saw again from him:

"No, we're not doing that again. No message and run."

"I didn't run."

"You also didn't message. I want to see you before you go be all heroic."

"Video chat?"

"Shepard, you're not funny. Dinner."

She choked, slightly. Dinner? It's a meal, and you want to see him, and it'll be fun. No, you are not panicking. And do not call it a date. Idiot.

"Okay. Dinner."

Then she left it at that until an hour later, when he prompted

"You did it again."

"I did not, it was your turn."

"You're not good at this conversation thing, are you?"

"No, not really."

"Where…would you like to have dinner?"

"You've lived on the Citadel longer than I have, you choose."

"I have no idea what humans eat."

"I have no idea what Turians eat."

"I'll get back to you. This is not me running."

She giggled and covered her mouth.

You are…such a dork. You should not have watched "Fleet and Flotilla" fourteen times.

Hush. It's the perfect background sound to hack and think.

About Turians. One Turian.

Shut up.

oOoOoOoOoOo

About a day later she heard:

'Dinner is at my apartment. Turns out most of the restaurants that say they're good at dextro and levo tend to be liars. Plus security. Plus reporters. I'd rather talk than whisper. I'll have two separate places deliver, ones that specialize. What would you like to eat? Your response will be timed.'

She stared at the message and smiled. Alone was so much better than a restaurant and so much worse.

'Ask the chef what they recommend. I'll have that.'

'I should ask, do you prefer water or is that just because it looks like vodka?'

'I like apple juice.' Apples were easy, had grown abundantly on Mindoir, one of Earth's crops that translated well to many climates. Relatively cheap. Usually for children. What were the odds he knew Earth food customs? Low.

'I'll get some.'

He sent a time and address. Tomorrow. Too soon. What to wear? She paced.

'Shepard. Say yes.'

She still didn't answer.

'Say yes now or the apple juice has an unfortunate accident.'

She grinned and sent

'Yes. Leave the juice alone, you monster.'

'See you then.'

oOoOoOoOoOo

Her panic was ratcheted high, she'd spent the day shopping for something to wear but didn't know a thing about fashion, didn't want to ask anybody and really wanted something that covered every inch of skin as a high priority. She didn't want an Asari dress, even though a lot of human women wore them.

Her coloring limited what she could wear anyway, so she went with casual and faux military green after not finding a single thing she liked and ending up with choosing this based on color.

She was early because she was always early, but she stood outside because she knew it was rude to knock early.

Until the door opened. "Shepard, I have surveillance cameras out there. I'm going to pretend I haven't seen you pacing for 10 minutes. I should have done something but I am not necessarily a nice person."

She jumped and she heard him laugh. "I was early…I…"

He pulled the door further open "Come in."

She dragged herself through the door on pure embarrassed willpower, and was pulled into a Turian hug, setting her heart pounding. Instead of mashing her nose against his chest, she turned her head and breathed, relaxed, and thought he smelled really good.

Garrus was not even a little guilty for pressuring her to visit, so glad she was here, half expecting her to skitter away or fall to the floor to escape a hug. She smelled good. He tilted his head down, his crest on the top of her hair, contemplating this strange person whose heart was beating through her ribs, the feel reverberating through his plates. He felt vaguely guilty about startling her, but…

No, he wasn't. This was nice. He didn't let go. He said "No surveillance here. Thank you."

She didn't have to ask for what, and she was so glad that she hadn't forced him a certain way, that he seemed to want to be Executor. "You're welcome. I told you that you had a pocket Spectre."

He said into her hair "And I told you that I'd hold you to that friend thing. From now on, you stay in touch. No protecting me. Let me protect myself."

She nodded "Okay. Promise." She was lying. She was bound to be in more trouble. She would not pull him into it. Ever. Protecting people was what she did and he should know better than to ask.

He let her go and led her to a simple kitchen table, food waiting in the oven and put out unceremoniously, apple juice ready. She smiled, sat down and they talked about Citadel politics and his new job. She listened, gratefully. Stupid happy to see him.

Garrus watched her, her heartbeat slowed down, she listened and talked, and he for the first time really started considering a relationship, which would of course be stupid and difficult and he didn't care. She was leaving. He had work to do. But she would…have shore leave.

The first issue was that by Turian standards of politeness, a woman had to extend a definite interest before a male could do a damned thing about it. Getting her to show up to drink apple juice seemed to be the extent of her involvement, he was not going to be getting any signs of definite interest. So did he want to go full deviant, make a pass at his former commander?

He once again regretted not asking for that bunk, but he still knew he was doing the right thing. To bring up Turian etiquette he said "I think my father might be brought to think that maybe human Spectres, or one human Spectre, is a good influence."

She asked quietly "How is your family?" She'd seen that Garrus's mother was in the early stages of Corpalis Syndrome. Terrible disease. She would certainly admit to hacking everyone on the Citadel, but wasn't going to admit to paying particular attention to anybody connected to Garrus.

He answered truthfully "Thrilled, really. Vakarian name in the news is good. My father's beyond proud, if slightly suspicious of my rise to Executor so quickly. He's not stupid. My mother is aglow. My sister is proud of me."

Mother aglow is good. Spend time with her, Garrus. Keep her here. Take care of her. "You've earned it."

He said seriously "You gave it to me on a platter."

She smiled "You earned me giving it to you on a platter."

He said seriously "Shepard. Lal." Her heart started to hammer and he could tell from here. That was a good sign. "How much do you know about Turian culture?"

She stalled out for a moment as she thought 'Everything I could find. Everything I could find that I shouldn't have found. I'm safe because you can't do anything unless I do. I'm safe because Turians do not get involved with humans. Not dutiful Turian sons that are Executors on the Citadel.' She said "Not much. Turians aren't all that friendly toward humans."

He said solemnly "I would like to change that." Take that the way you want, Lal. I want to change that for you and for the Citadel.

She answered slowly "And you have the chance to do it. We can do it, Garrus. We can create change."

He nodded slowly and then said "I plan on it." Really, I need to plan on it. Figure out how. "Whenever the Normandy is in port, you come see me. I am…going to hold you to that friend thing." And figure out how to hold you.

She said with hammering heart 'Do not say it's a date.' She said instead, scintillating there, Lal "Okay." She wasn't lying.

Garrus smiled. It was a start. If he'd learned anything recently, it's that having a plan was a good thing. She'd taught him that. He'd keep apple juice stocked and learn something about human culture, see if he could turn that heart hammer into something more solid. For now she was worn out and stressed and he didn't want to add to it. He had her promise, and now he knew that he could and should talk to her, insist. No more excuses about courage. She hadn't been avoiding him, had spent time turning theoretical drawbacks into advantages. He couldn't see how to turn all their disadvantages into assets yet, but he would.

They finished dinner, he insisted on another hug, she blushed.

It was enough. More than enough. She'd found a way for him, he'd find a way for them. He started planning for her next visit.


	6. Chapter 6

Cara was dying, floating over Alchera, her parents' hands on her shoulders.

She tried not to struggle, but the panic overwhelmed her efforts and she knew it didn't matter anymore. She was unable to keep from screaming, thrashing and using up her oxygen.

She heard in their voices:

It's going to be over soon.

We're here.

The image of their broken bodies lit her mind, and she couldn't change it to a picture of them dancing. She imagined lying down on the floor with them, back in that room with the inevitable and the irresistible. She reached out her hands for theirs.

I'm so sorry. I couldn't save you. I couldn't save me. I couldn't save them.

She released every pain killer from her Omni Tool into her system, felt the pain from the cold in her lungs lessen but not the panic. That was deeper, inevitable, irresistible. She would lose consciousness soon from lack of air and the drugs.

She reached for her parents and thought…be my breath.

Always.

oOoOoOoOoOo

Garrus had gone to bed late, researching, reviewing and refining new training and hiring policy, particularly regarding Turian biotics. Turian biotics were not supposed to exist. He knew they did exist, knew them from his experiences in the military and C-Sec…but they were expected to suppress their talents and not admit to them. Turians were trained to ignore blue glow. It wasn't mentioned. It usually only happened with anger or when someone's life was in danger; involuntary or self-defense flare. He was proposing that Turian biotics serve openly. Something he could do that Palaven was not willing to do. Something that would draw new talent to the Citadel, create a refuge. He was going to propose that human and Asari biotics also serve in C-Sec, another new idea. He needed help putting together a set of advisors to advocate for biotic needs, rights and training. It was going to be a fight. One he relished.

He blearily ignored the first few alerts, but a cascade of them convinced him to wake. He dragged himself reluctantly away from sleep, rubbing at his eyes to clear the blur and saw the first alert in the queue.

"SSV NORMANDY DESTROYED, COMMANDER SHEPARD DEAD, SURVIVING CREW RESCUED"

No.

He scrolled through the headlines and messages, multiple sources. He had alerts keyed to her name…and…and no possibility this was a hoax or a lie.

It had to be a hoax…or a lie…or a mistake. She couldn't be dead. It wasn't possible…

He scanned the articles for details.

He scrambled with shaking hands and found Liara's contact. Her face appeared, tear-stained and grieving. "Garrus. I'm so sorry…"

"What happened? Are you okay?"

"I'm…I'm fine. She made me get in a pod. She went to go get Joker. He says it's his fault, that he wouldn't leave…"

Fury blended with the helplessness and the grief.

"Liara, are you safe now? How…do you know she's gone? Could she still be out there?"

Liara shook her head and said "No. No…she was blown clear, her oxygen line severed. Joker said he was able to watch until…until…"

Until she stopped moving. Until she died from asphyxiation.

"What hit the Normandy? Geth?"

She shook her head "No. Something…Joker said it was huge. Twenty times the size of the Normandy with a weapon that sheared her into pieces."

"A Reaper?" 

"I don't know. Didn't look like Sovereign. He says something different. Something big. There are a few recordings of it, some crew could see from inside the escape pods, but those won't be released to the general public, for now it's classified. I didn't see it." She took a deep sobbing breath and said "I can't believe she's gone. I should have…I shouldn't have left her…"

Garrus saw himself, saw Liara, as though out of his own body, disoriented and insistent on his memory of the woman who was now gone. He said calmly "Liara, don't blame yourself. You followed orders. You and Joker are alive and that's the way she wanted it."

Liara's eyes closed and squeezed fresh tears as she said with a helpless laugh "I know…oh, I know. That doesn't make it better…"

No, it doesn't. But it's true. A truth that won't respond to public opinion.

"Liara, thank you. Take care of yourself. If you need anything, you come find me. If you just want to talk, you come find me. You don't need a reason."

She nodded and broke down crying again, he ended the call.

More information came as hours passed, but he was done with questions, full to overflowing with waves of reflexive denial alternating with horrified acceptance. Shock and disorientation persisted, the out of body sense of trying to think like her blended into lost time spent staring. Reading articles and watching broadcasts made it seem like a tragedy separate from him, something so big that he was blessedly dwarfed in it, an observer. Commander Shepard was remembered by people he'd never met. She hadn't just been on the SR-1. She had a whole life he didn't know. Then he remembered he'd planned to know it, wanted to know it, and wouldn't.

He hadn't asked for that bunk.

22 people lost, including her.

He wanted to rage, but he knew she wouldn't like it. Something about the way she'd cried at Ashley's memorial, the way she'd sat, all the colors of vulnerability in her face and her voice. She hadn't said a word against the Council or even Saren. It had been about Ashley.

She had waited until she could take action, months later, the Council grounding her had resulted in him having authority and reams of actionable data…

She had never allowed rage to dictate her actions. Every ounce of her will had always been focused on a goal and she never lost sight of it.

He said aloud "I remember, Shepard."

He still had apple juice in his refrigerator, so he went to the kitchen, poured a glass of horosk for himself, a glass of apple juice for her. He stared at her glass, toasted to the sky. He ignored every alert as he slowly sipped and savored the burning alcohol that left his tongue numb. It added to the shock, the disorientation, and the swirl of memories as he contemplated what she would have wanted.

"You'd want me to do the hard thing, the right thing, and fuck if I have any idea what that is right now because I want to break…. What I wanted…Spirits, what I wanted was to find a way…"

He couldn't say it out loud.

'To be together' seemed trite, stupid and something to keep to himself.

"You deserved better, Shepard. You deserved better than Mindoir. You deserved better than the Alliance. You deserved better than the Council. And you deserved better than me."

He, like Liara, like Joker, was going to have to live with the fact that he was exactly where she had wanted him to be…and she was gone.

He gripped the glass, pressed it consciously and carefully to the table, didn't squeeze too hard, counted the last few sips of self indulgent alcohol out on his tongue. He flipped the glass over when it was empty.

No more.

No more what I want.

Looking at the apple juice he contemplated what to do with it.

Pour it out?

No.

Do something self indulgent?

Sure, this is my last chance. Once I leave this apartment, no more self indulgence.

He shuffled through his alcohol collection, found something with a clear bottle, spherical. He poured out the alcohol, cleaned the bottle, removed the label carefully. He poured the apple juice from the glass and the refrigerated container into it, doing some research on canning methods and times and temperatures. The feel of glass and the steady hand needed for dealing with high heat, his mind focused on research…it helped. He could do something constructive instead of destructive.

He held the result up to the light of the Citadel through an open window, his personal self indulgent relic, the heat gradually dissipating to room temperature.

"Yeah, Shepard, it's stupid. I know. Just give it to me this one time. I promise I'll do better."

He put it down carefully on the windowsill where it would catch the light, stared at the clear amber for an unmeasured amount of time.

He looked up how long it took a human to asphyxiate. Loss of consciousness by three minutes. Brain death by six.

She suffered. He'd like to tell himself that it was only for a few minutes, but it didn't matter. She suffered. Long enough. Time had slowed down for her, panic and pain and loss.

He decided shock was a good thing, used it to get him through a shower. He dressed, he ate, he moved through life by habit. Denial faded first, he had to accept lost choices, lost chances, and get on with new ones. Ones that would make her proud. Ones she'd make.

"Shepard, I wish I had your mind. I'm going to do the best with the one I have and what I know…you'd want."

And he did know. It was hard to do, but he did know.

He went to work. He checked in with every living member of the Normandy. His fury with Joker was gone the moment he saw Joker's face, heard the hollow loss in his voice. He checked in with the families of everyone that had been lost.

The only person with no family to notify was Shepard.

No, that's not true. I'm your family. You're not here anymore to argue with me about it, so last person standing wins. Nobody else needs to know it, but I'm your family.

Anderson came by to see him at work and they exchanged now-practiced words of condolences.

Anderson then told him "She left a will."

Garrus tilted his head, narrowed his eyes, curious but unable to speak or ask, his throat closed tight.

Anderson said "Everything goes to you."

Spirits, I am her family. She knew it. Anderson knows it. I bet Liara knows it. I bet Joker knows it…hell, I bet Wrex knows it.

He couldn't keep the subvocal combination of permitted and acknowledged grief and thanks from vibrating in his throat, but Anderson couldn't hear it. Anderson said "She didn't own the apartment here on the Citadel, and she cleared everything out before the Normandy…went on her mission. What she has left is in an apartment on…Intai'sei? Her will is short. The place goes to you, and everything in it. You can do anything you want with it, sell it, give it away. It says…she trusts your judgment." Anderson transferred a document to Garrus's Omni Tool.

Garrus started to laugh and said "Did she ever tell you about Intai'sei?"

Anderson shook his head.

Garrus said "It was damned Pinnacle Station. The simulation. She…I don't think I've ever seen her have so much fun. Manic fun, but fun. Games to her…impossible to resist. If the Reapers lured her into a series of timed trials…we'd never get her out. First someone bet her his gun, then the station master bet her this apartment…and I think she'd have done it for free. I think she'd have paid…"

Anderson drew his brows together, missing some context obviously. Garrus said "The final scenario, I couldn't believe she agreed to it, but she was laughing. They turned off all the safeties and re-enacted a Turian attack during the First Contact War that Ahern lived through. So we're being overrun by virtual Turians. Now I'm a little insulted about that, but trying to stay alive. Shepard's laughing like…like it was the most fun she'd ever had. Liara looks like she's about to cry. I ask Shepard if she's proud of herself for being goaded into suicide…and she laughs and says…'Garrus, how many opportunities do I get to go into a fight where I know my side already won historically?' To her it was a sure thing because it had already been done and I realize…how low the odds were that we were going to survive most things. And we won. Of course we won, we had her."

Anderson ducked his head and smiled "We're planning a memorial placement and a service. I'd like you to speak."

Garrus nodded and said "It would be an honor. If you need any help…"

Anderson said "I'll ask. Thank you."

Garrus asked quickly "Do you know when?"

Anderson said "Probably a few weeks."

Garrus nodded "Okay. I'm…going to take a trip to Intai'sei. I will be back by then."

Anderson answered "Let me know your schedule. We won't hold it without you."

oOoOoOoOoOo

The ridiculousness of Intai'sei buoyed Garrus somehow. A prefab in the middle of nowhere, won on a suicidal bet, to a woman who owned nothing else. It took him a few days to steady people, make sure everyone knew that he was grieving but sane, which was what she would have wanted.

He was going to be responsible if it killed him. That's how she lived her life. Eventually the responsibility had killed her. He had moments of rage and helplessness, but he was anchored by responsibility. One she'd given him. It needed to be done, and he'd do it.

He arrived in a long-range shuttle half expecting the place to be gone, because again…prefab in the middle of nowhere…but it hadn't been looted. It was improbable and that suited her. He imagined her sense of humor, embracing this place won in a deadly game she could have opted out of entirely. But he had been there, seen her face. Something about her was most alive in deadly games. Some deep reservoir of calculated gamble rose up. He'd seen it, smelled it, been there time after time as obstacles were revealed, ideas occurred to her and her guarded eyes stayed the same, but her smile…

Her smile in battle was a heady thing. He'd never seen her laugh the way she had at Pinnacle Station before or again, but that smile that couldn't be fully suppressed, that little quirk that meant people were going to die, and not her people.

He'd been raised in a military tradition of intimidation and status. She was good at that, but even better…at that little smile.

He was buoyed by the fact that she'd thought of him, had taken actions for him, had given him this exclusive right to be here, his fingertips passing over surfaces, taking in the view.

There were only a few stacked containers of her belongings.

Stuffed animals, strings of lights, kitchen utensils?

He moved to another box…brightly colored pillows, an old…no, ancient…Omni Tool…

Were these her belongings?

Yes…they…smelled like her. The pillows and the animals and…

Realizing that, he packed them all back in except for the Omni Tool. To have something somewhere that still smelled like her made it worth the trip. The bizarre, confusing trip.

Commander Shepard liked stuffed animals? He imagined it briefly, the woman that looked like, and smelled like metal…no, not her.

The woman that explained that he was her only friend and said frostily that not drinking alcohol was frowned upon as a life choice…yeah, maybe her.

He was going to do one more self indulgent, stupid, offensive and possibly insulting thing, and he'd thought a lot about it. He'd thought carefully about ramifications and questions, decided he shouldn't, but then grabbed a shade of red paint that matched her hair before he'd come here. He'd told himself not to do it, that he didn't have the right to it, and then he'd decided this really would be his last self indulgent thing.

The last time he'd seen her, at his apartment, he'd tilted his crest to her hair. He'd had a plan. He'd known she could die at any time. He could die at any time. They could all die soon. He hoped to die as she had, responsibilities killing him.

There were clan markings and then there were expressions of grief, of loss, that were worn on the plate and the skin.

He did not have the right to either appear bonded, with shared clan markings, or to the symbol of a loss of a bond mate, which was a stylized cut into the left mandible.

But he was going to take her color. Some of it, anyway. He wouldn't lose his own marks and it would be meaningless to everyone else.

He looked at his face in the mirror and explained carefully to her as he steady-handedly applied red paint to the center of his crest. "You didn't have family, Shepard, but you had me. You have me. This is the last place I touched you, I should have explained what touching a Turian crest to your head meant. It meant thank you. It meant I love you. It meant I wanted to have enough time…"

He stopped for a moment, hand shaking and breath short. He steadied his hand and remembered the curve of her lips as she figured out how to win, applied a stylized outline "So it's a Turian thing, but it isn't. It's a me thing. It's a you thing. I want a reminder, every day, of why I am where I am. Anderson said you'd love to see me as Councilor, so that's my promise, Lal. Anybody looking at me is going to see your smile. People are going to ask me about it and I'm going to smile at them the way you smiled at me. All the questions you didn't answer, all the times you stopped talking. I'm going to learn how to do that. I'm going to honor that you never told me…a Spirits damned thing about your life…but I know all I need to know. I'm your family. Incredibly…self indulgent…stupid…family."

It looked good. Three stacking gentle curves in diminishing size, largest on the bottom, with tilted ends, resembling the silhouette of nested bowls more than anything else. They were not literal. They were not Turian. They were not human. They were just his, and hers in absentia.

He only stayed for a day, stretched out on a bed that was hers and then his, therefore theirs.

He packed the mysteries of boxes up in the shuttle and brought them back with him where they would stay unopened except when he wanted to remember what she smelled like.

He fiddled with the Omni Tool…so old that it couldn't connect to anything…old enough to be older than she was when she was born on Mindoir.

He was feeling obsessive and guilty, researching a hunk of ancient technology that was likely fried, but he really did not consider giving up. He did finally figure out how to get the thing to give a readout. There was nothing on the Omni Tool except for a file he would need to transfer to access at all.

He copied it over to his Omni Tool and opened it. Time stamped to right after Pinnacle Station. Before Virmire. Before Saren. Before apple juice. There she was, with that strategic smile, as though she were about to do something audacious. "Hey. Garrus. This is stupid and all, but if you're seeing this, I'm dead. Unless you're someone that broke into my stylish middle of nowhere apartment, in which case…nah. You're not as smart as Garrus and I don't believe it. Anyway, I'm dead. That…is…bad. You are now the proud owner of a bunch of inexplicable junk. Junk I love. I'm not sure I can explain the human tradition of stuffed animals, but THIS…" She pulled a battered stuffed Varren with tiny multicolored spots all over it from the container and said "Is Sprinklebits. She does not like being in the dark. And this is Aloysius and he does not like his name but that's what happens when I am allowed to name things. He does not care for cheese. Do not offer. He bites…"

"This…is a spatula. You were never involved in the brownie controversy of '83. I wish I'd learned to bake dextro but I didn't want to make you sick…"

"It isn't much but it's meaningful. To me. You know the big stuff, these are the little things. Very little things. I also had a cat that came with me from Mindoir. His name is Hale. If you could tell him…I'd appreciate it. Here's his contact info…"

"I wish I'd had more time. I wish I had told you these stories while I was alive. I know you'd have understood. I know it. I just…I'm not sure I understand? But you asked me if I was proud I'd been goaded into something suicidal…yeah. I kinda am. I never saw it as suicide, but I've never been dead before, I may have to reconsider that stance. I'm also glad a Turian was bossy enough to tell me that he was going with me into something suicidal…"

"There's a lot about me I never explained. That wasn't because I didn't want you to know. It was because…I was your Commander, and I simply could not burden you with the fact that…when I was rummaging around the shuttle bay, I was looking for a container to hide contraband…this."

He remember she smelled like fear, realized she was afraid of him, the surge of subvocal distress vibrated through his throat.

"You are tough, and you are strong, and it would be a bit unreasonable to ask you to follow me into something suicidal if you knew I paced my cabin discussing cheese with Aloysius. Truth is I pretended a lot. I pretended to swear. I pretended to drink. I pretended to be hard and tough and I pretended not to cry. Liara…Liara knows a lot about me. You can ask her. She…kinda cheated, and discovered all this during her first tour of my head…"

"But you're the first person I wanted to tell. I hope I do…did…tell you and I just haven't made it back here to update this file. I just want you to know that in a lifetime of hiding from people, being nowhere near as tough or strong as I appeared, you saw me, and I didn't have to hide from you. Even though I did. It's…complicated. But what you did about it matters. So…"

She gestured around the apartment, with a smile on her face, a little sadness in her voice and eyes.

"This is my life. I don't have much money. Keep it or donate it or give it to the families of…well…I guess that's the point, isn't it? You'll know better than I do right now what would be best. I might know what's best on the battlefield or manage to fake it, but unless it's a stuffed animal, I probably don't know how to talk to them. Kinda like now. I decided to do this and not take it back and not write it down…"

"I want you to be happy, Garrus. I want you to have a beautiful life. When you think of me, know that I would have loved to bake you brownies, or the Turian equivalent. I hope I made you proud. I hope your service is valued. You deserve the best. This Omni Tool is the only thing I have left from Mindoir, something my parents gave me, something that meant a lot to me. She's yours now and really not much more than a paperweight, junk…same with the stuff in these boxes. They only mean something to me. I'm lucky to have served with you. This…weird place in the middle of nowhere is kinda like the inside of my head. Isolated, sheltered, and nobody else goes there…"

"You can show Liara this, or ask her anything you want. I mean, I'm dead…if I can't answer questions then…when can I? Well, that sounded stupid. Anyway. What is important is that the stories don't really matter. You know what you need to know about me. I was Commander Shepard and that's who I needed to be, who I wanted to be, and I did what I had to do, what I needed to do. And I had the best company. Be well, Garrus. Be who you need to be. Who you want to be. Do what you need to do. If there's an afterlife, I'll see you there. If there isn't…that's a shame. I would have liked to have more time."

She smiled, not her strategic smile, but a face he hadn't seen before. Vulnerable, nearly begging to be understood, hopeful. He made a sound that reflected her expression, a building crescendo of losing something he didn't know he had, and gaining something nobody could take from him. Permission to feel exactly how he felt. Permission he'd never have found unless he cared enough to really…look…

He didn't need to ask Liara a damned thing. He was sure she could give him facts, but Lal had just given her heart.

That's all he needed, from her voice.

He called…and expected for there to not be a cat named Hale…but there was…and the owners seemed to find nothing unusual with being asked to speak with a cat… He informed them that Commander Shepard was dead, and they said they had seen it on the news…but they knew she would appreciate it if he told Hale for her. He didn't understand, but he did, and he said "Well…I'm Garrus. And she wanted me to tell you that she's gone. I think…I mean…I know…she loved you. And I wish…"

He almost told a cat he wished they'd met under different circumstances, and then he had to stop.

Hale purred, and it sounded like subvocals for a moment, and then Garrus laughed and hung up on a cat.

I wish.

He encrypted the file seven different ways, stored it in backups and redundancies, and he was going to do what he had to do, what he needed to do.

Executor Vakarian would become Councilor Vakarian, and on display in whatever series of offices he inhabited was going to be a sealed bottle of apple juice, an ancient Omni Tool and a stuffed Varren named Sprinklebits. On his face would be her stylized smile.

He was going to be proud to be goaded into something suicidal.


	7. Chapter 7

Cara woke up, a surreal moment of disorientation, Cara Lal Fanning Shepard and walls she didn't recognize.

She heard Liara's voice "Lal. It's okay. You're okay. Take a moment and breathe."

Liara's voice was reassuring, but a flood of panic hit when Cara-Lal-Fanning-Shepard tried to reach back to what had last happened, losing consciousness over Alchera. She tested her lungs, which she'd felt freeze and crack in vacuum. They were fine. No pain anywhere.

She turned her face to look at Liara, who was smiling. Liara said "You have a lot of questions and I have some answers." Liara lifted her hand and said "If I may, please, Lal. This is a conversation best conducted privately."

Lal nodded agreement and Liara's hand shifted to her face, a caress as gentle as her smile. Different than any expression she'd seen on Liara's face.

Lal felt warm, overwhelming welcome, pressured and strong, washing over her for a long moment. Liara said, words and thoughts gently woven between welcome and love, setting an emotional tone that allowed Lal a sense of accepting peace. "Welcome back. I wish I could catch you up quickly, but this will take some time, because time has passed, but you are welcome, and you are back, and that's…a miracle. Be patient. I'll answer every question I can. Some I won't be able to answer. You died over Alchera."

"Felt like it." Strong, streaming memory with pain and panic, the experience mixed in with parental voices. "Sorry. I…you don't need that in your head."

Liara said "I've imagined it...thousands of times. Cara. It's two years after you died."

Two years of blank space. Two years of blank space while dead. "Who else died?"

Liara told her the names. Liara's grief had a whole, round feel to it. Complete, no rough edges. Cara's was sharp and splintered. In some mental alchemy to blend with welcome and grief, Liara seemed to encompass but not diminish Cara's grief, hold it and honor it.

"Are they alive too? Somehow?"

"No. Your body was recovered because you were thrown clear and froze in the atmosphere. Bringing you back to life has cost billions of credits. The Shadow Broker wanted your body to give to the Collectors. The Collectors are what destroyed the Normandy. Agents for the Reapers. We've learned a great deal about them in the past two years. They are active, and we now know they are preying on colonies in the Terminus systems. Humans and Turians and Asari are working together to protect our colonies. Unfortunately we are not winning. I helped to recover your body and I have worked with Cerberus, who had the funding and the technology to bring you back to life. You have been medically resurrected by a scientist, Miranda Lawson and her team. I…don't understand it. I have worked with her and Cerberus, bringing you back, keeping you secure."

Memories flashed, Kahoku and Toombs and experimentation. "Cerberus is…problematic. I've cost them…a lot. Destroyed their infrastructure and personnel."

"Yes, but you are an asset in the fight against Reapers, who are now the primary threat to human interests. Everyone's interests. Miranda and I have been able to cooperate on putting your mind back the way it was, exactly as it was. I know it's you. There was discussion about placing a control chip…and I would not allow it."

There was a great deal of pride in Liara's mind, and so Cara asked "And why is that they didn't kill you when you made that demand, Ms. T'Soni?"

"Because I'm now the Shadow Broker and I have learned a few things about Cerberus myself…things that would become public if you were…not up to my inspection…or if something happened to me…or to you."

Satisfaction bloomed through Cara, she couldn't help it. "Nicely played. And congratulations."

Liara rippled internal laughter, relief and more pressured welcome "Thank you. I'm…thrilled. You…are a miracle and I've known about this for two years and I will not be able to contain how much joy it brings me to see you again."

Cara asked "What happened to the rest of the crew?"

"Wrex returned to Tuchanka and has made Clan Urdnot the leading faction, he's making reforms. Kaidan is working with the Alliance still. Tali returned to the Flotilla and finished her pilgrimage with the information you gave her about the Geth. Karin Chakwas has been helping with your medical care, she's given me updates and understanding I would not have had on my own. Joker is hoping to be your new pilot. Cerberus rebuilt the Normandy, upgraded her, and wants to hand her to you, with an alliance and funding to the extent that it is in the best interest of all humans…all species…if you get back out there and help fight them."

Cara smiled slightly "Desperate times and desperate measures?"

Liara flowed affirmation "All of that. We can leave here now. You can take control of the SR-2 Normandy and I can catch you up on galactic happenings while we head to our first destination."

"And where would that be?"

"The Citadel. I think Councilor Vakarian will be very happy to see you. After I convince him not to kill me for not telling him…anything about you."

"Councilor Vakarian?" Cara was overjoyed to hear it. He's alive…he did it…

Liara's response was gently encouraging "Yes. Councilor Vakarian. After you died he offered me anything I needed, told me I didn't need a reason, and he's been true to that. He gave me investigational resources, people to work with I could trust, things I couldn't have gotten on my own, and helped me find the Shadow Broker, helped me…appropriate that operation. He doesn't know about you because…because I couldn't tell him. It wasn't very likely that Project Lazarus…bringing you back…would work. I thought he would insist on going with me, and I know…and he knew…he was needed on the Citadel. He reformed C-Sec and after a year convinced Palaven and Sparatus to make him Councilor. He's used every resource in his power to focus on cooperation in defeating the Reapers. He's always worked closely with Anderson, and then was able to gain the Asari Councilor's confidence and cooperation. He's…we're…working on the Salarians but…they're not all that cooperative."

Cara felt a massive warming flush, the wild surge of Fleet and Flotilla romance dreams and being in his arms, then a physical blush as Liara was present for that entire flood.

"Don't tell him about that part."

"You're definitely you."

"I'll be me, just don't tell him."

"I don't think he'd be sorry at all to know that…you felt that way."

"He's the Turian Councilor. He can't be involved with me. Ever."

"That should be his decision."

"No, it really shouldn't. It's my decision. If you couldn't tell him about me because he'd be distracted…you can certainly understand that I can't…be involved…in any way. Humans and Turians don't…"

"You could."

"No. No, I really can't. I have to be Commander Shepard. He has to be Councilor Vakarian…and…shut up…I just woke up, it's been years. He's probably involved with someone else."

"Well, there you'd be wrong. Councilor Vakarian is now a powerful, enigmatic…entirely socially unreachable gentleman."

"And he's going to stay that way."

"But when he sees you…"

"When he sees me, Liara, he's going to see Commander Shepard."

"He's not going to like that."

"Well, neither will I, but…remember…billions of credits, Reapers? It might have been two years, but are there any…Turian and human couples in the Turian Hierarchy?"

Liara hesitated. Shadows of all the political wrangles, losses, focus…none of it about advancing social attitudes regarding cross-species…anything. Working beside each other, yes. The rest…

"That's a no."

"Yes. That's a no. It just…it shouldn't be that way."

"Well…I should be dead. I can make a lot of things go the way I want them to, by force or by guile, but not in my lifetime am I going to put Councilor Vakarian at political risk."

"He might have something to say about that." Liara sounded…hopeful.

"You said I have a ship, Liara. I can get away. I was dead, not stupid. If you've really made sure I'm exactly the same person, I still don't know how to have a relationship. I'm just going to blush and choke and run away and no advances in…anything are going to change that. I'm alive, and thank you, but…ignore the rest of the…ignore all of that."

"You died and came back to life, isn't it time to rearrange some priorities?"

"I'm getting that I wasn't resurrected to indulge a disastrous idea like dating a Turian Councilor whose political position is dependent upon not appearing to serve human interests. It's a miracle that he's where he is, doing what he's doing. I have the same priority I did when I died, you made sure of that. Plus no control chip, so you can't tell me what to do. You guys have been on point, I need to catch up AND…not screw up what's working. If you keep on talking about this, I'm going to hide under the table and that's going to be hard to explain. I'll tell them you made me do it."

Liara gave the equivalent of a mental sigh "Okay. I'm certain we're under surveillance. I didn't want to talk out loud. It is likely your Omni Tool and the Normandy are rigged for surveillance. I'm not suggesting you trust Cerberus, but we can take the Normandy to the Citadel. We'll get you a new Omni Tool. I suggest shutting it down into forced maintenance to disable passive monitoring. There we're going to have Garrus and my tech team go over every inch of the ship…if you want to talk, this is the best way. I'm…so glad you're back."

"I'm so glad you're here, Liara. Thank you."

"You feeling okay? Any medical concerns?"

"I'm fine. I feel like me. My ability to blush and want to hide is functional, thank you."

"I could help with that."

"No…you really can't."

oOoOoOoOoOo

She had a conference with the Illusive Man, who reinforced what Liara had said, refined and clarified that his concern was the Collectors and the Reapers. She thanked him politely for his confidence and investment, promised that they could work together as long as their purposes remained aligned in that direction. She stated she would not look out specifically and only for human interests, but would appreciate his intel and guidance, would do her best once she was up to speed.

She took a tour of the ship, Liara at her side every step. Joker looked at her and said "I really didn't believe it…"

Commander Shepard time. Lal liked Joker, a lot, appreciated his humor and skill. He required a blend of snark and toughness, but what do you say to a man who feels responsible for your death? "I'm glad to see you, Joker. Turns out you could pilot that pod? My suit was…slightly harder…but it seems to have worked out okay."

Joker's face fell briefly into shock and then transmuted to appreciative, she got a ringing laugh as she had hoped, and then he said "Okay. It's definitely Shepard."

Liara said, mock insulted "Of course it is."

Joker waved a hand "I didn't believe it, but now I do. Welcome back, Commander." Gratitude flooded his voice.

"Glad to be back, Joker. Glad to see you're here. What do you think of her?"

Joker said "The ship…amazing…the babysitting AI…not so much."

Liara explained "EDI. She's the ship AI."

EDI introduced herself "Welcome aboard, Commander Shepard."

Lal smiled "Thank you. It's been a…weird day."

Joker snorted "At least that."

EDI responded "If you need anything, please ask."

Lal was desperately curious, but that is what made her cut the conversation short. She needed tough and incurious right now, considering they were going to take a short, civilized hop to the Citadel and then overhaul everything technical. She was not going to invest herself overly in the function of the ship just yet. Lal said "Joker, take us to the Citadel."

"Yes. Ma'am."

She also chose to meet the majority of staff once they made it to the Citadel, because that was most likely going to be overhauled.

So…she retired to her cabin, which Liara showed her. Liara gave her a long hug.

After she'd gone Lal had a long moment of silence, wondering what stayed the same, what changed. She hadn't seen a glow. She hadn't…

Mom? Dad?

Yes.

Yes.

I…don't remember being dead.

Silence.

We can't do calculus for you either, Lal. We can only go where you know we've been.

Where we've both been. I don't remember…anything.

You are alive.

I'm terrified.

Well…that's a reasonable response. We want to see what you can do…don't you?

Yeah, yeah I do.

Plus it's nice to know you're worth so much.

We'll see, won't we?

Some of us already see.

You guys are still dead, what do you know?

oOoOoOoOoOo

She couldn't use her Omni Tool because it was bugged. She really hoped…Garrus had a heads up from somewhere.

They were met at the security checkpoint on the Citadel by a male Turian. No paint. Grey eyes. Grey armor. He was big even for a Turian, probably had six inches on Garrus. He intercepted them, Liara smiling and crashing into him with a launched hug. He laughed and lifted her, then dropped her down to the floor "Liara."

Liara was grinning "Russ! Thank you for meeting us."

He grinned at her and said "Oh, I'm not missing this."

Liara introduced them "Lal Shepard, this is Spectre Hemorus Orbestan."

Hemorus thankfully did not give Lal a hug, but did nod his head and said "Please, call me Russ. It is an honor to meet you, Commander Shepard."

Lal smiled and said "It's a pleasure."

Liara said "He can use his Spectre authority to get us in. You won't be flagged. It will give us some options."

Russ said "I bet he's going to make an actual expression today."

Liara said, clearly teasing "Stop. You're mean."

Lal was quiet. Russ moved them both through security under his Spectre authority. He said airily "I'm not mean. I'm celebrating." He ushered them into ground transport and when he got behind the controls said casually "So, what's it like to be dead?"

She said steadily "Dark and quiet."

He nodded as though that were somehow enlightening and asked "And what's it like to be alive?"

She said deadpan "A little louder."

He laughed. Liara's lips moved into a slight smile. They were at the Citadel quickly, the rest of the time spent in silence. Lal was nervous, pacing her breath. She wanted to see Garrus again, of course, she just…didn't want to faint as a result. And really, really didn't want to cause him a shock of this magnitude before witnesses. She tried to find a way around it. She couldn't go in alone. She needed Liara to verify that she was…who she was. If that could even be done.

In the reception area, Russ conferred with an assistant, who nodded and moved to the imposing doors that theoretically led to Councilor Vakarian's office. Russ said quietly "Few minutes. He's in a meeting, but it isn't life or death. I just told Birgon that it was me, you and a guest. Urgent."

Spectre or not, that he was on dash in and interrupt status with a Councilor was good to know. Lal said "Liara, why don't you go in first. Explain. I don't want to ambush him."

Russ laughed and said "No. NO. You can't. This is the best ambush. Shepard, you're killing me."

Liara said "You won't know what I've said to him, Lal."

Lal shook her head "Doesn't matter. I don't need to."

Russ said stubbornly "He's expecting us both and a guest."

Lal shook her head "Liara can explain that."

Russ scraped his fringe against the wall and made a sound of distress and pleaded to nobody in particular "I am not a delivery boy."

Lal looked at Russ and said "Fine. I'll keep you occupied. Do you have more questions? Make them last while Liara's in there, and I'll answer."

Russ narrowed his eyes, looked at Lal and said "Okay. I'll take that deal."

Liara looked distressed at her options, but she was being motioned ahead by Birgon, and she accepted Lal's judgment.

Liara entered Garrus's office. He sat behind his wide and immaculate desk, gestured for her to take a seat opposite. She obliged, opened her mouth, closed it, and he watched her carefully.

She said quickly "Two months after Shepard died I asked you for help, and you gave it to me. You didn't ask what I was doing. I believe the people who offered me assistance never told you what my mission was. Did they?"

Garrus looked at Liara, alerted that it was urgent by Russ's interruption and Liara's nervousness. Urgent. Something Liara thinks is urgent. Something that makes Liara nervous. Something that went back two years? He shook his head "No. You wanted confidentiality, you got it. You've given me the same on projects I've asked you to assist with."

She nodded "Okay. A few things. Nobody's life is in danger. The opposite. I'm not crazy. I'm not indoctrinated. Two years ago I recovered Shepard's body with your help. Cerberus had alerted me that the Shadow Broker was looking to buy her body, sell it to the Collectors. I recovered her body with their intel."

Garrus bit his own tongue at that, but held still, the taste of blood concurrent with the influx of shock.

She continued quickly "That mission led me to being able to take over the Shadow Broker's infrastructure. I established a relationship with Cerberus scientists and the man who directs Cerberus's assets."

Garrus swallowed "The Illusive Man?"

She nodded "Yes. They…told me that they could bring Shepard back to life."

Garrus carefully did not bite his tongue again. Shock, blood and disbelief.

She said quickly to get it all out "I reviewed the science, I believed it was possible, but not probable. The doctor in charge, Miranda Lawson, told me that the odds were very low, but it was…possible. And the Illusive Man wanted her brought back to aid in the fight against the Reapers. Shepard's body was safe from the Collectors and I maintained a relationship with Cerberus and their progress with her for the past two years. The science is complicated and I don't understand it all, but she's alive. Her body and mind have been brought back, I'm sure it's her, I joined my mind with hers."

Long practice kept Garrus's talons from springing out from under plates and digging into the chair. He never did that when someone was in the room. He'd had the arm covers changed to stone so when his talons did clench, they did no visible damage, no record of his temper. He asked calmly "Where is she?"

Liara pointed behind her shoulder and said "In your waiting room. She insisted…I tell you first before…"

Sniper training kept him still, kept his breath moving at a chosen pace.

Shepard…Lal…alive…and in his waiting room. He was glad Liara had prefaced her comments with the lack of 'crazy' or 'indoctrinated', because he couldn't hear any more or ask questions at the moment. He only had one request. "Please show her in."

Lal had waited. Russ had ignored everyone, ignored the opportunity to ask questions and kept watch on the door. All he said was "Nice of you to think of the feelings of a guy four times your size who could probably have us both executed before dinner. Damn, I wanted to see that."

She answered "Well, nice of you to consider the feelings of someone who might come back even if they got executed by dinner."

Russ laughed and made himself comfortable. They sat in silence until Liara opened the door and gestured Lal ahead. Russ said "Good luck. Any chance I could get you to record it? Take pictures? I could come in handy. I'd owe you a favor."

She smiled at him and shook her head solemnly.

Russ looked overtly disappointed in life and his life choices up to this point "Damn."

She reached the door and Liara said "I told him."

And there it was, the urge to ask 'told him what, what did he say?' Lal nodded and said "Thank you."

Liara said "We'll wait."

Lal shook her head "You don't have to."

Liara laughed and said "Oh yeah, we do. Nobody…me, Russ or Garrus, is going to let you run around the Citadel on your own."

Lal sighed and said "Right. I'm an investment."

Liara smiled and said "I prefer to think of you as precious. Go."

Lal opened the door only enough for her to fit through, aware of the irony of not trying to draw attention to oneself on the Citadel in a Councilor's office. She doubted anybody thought she was Commander Shepard, but she didn't want anybody getting a glimpse inside.

When she was sure the door was closed, she saw him. He was standing by a huge desk. He was…yeah, he was glowing. Liara believed she was herself and now she believed she was herself. She smiled.

Garrus watched her slip through the door, holding it close to her body. She turned to look at him and then…her smile. Liara said it was her…but he was conditioned to believe…to know…that it couldn't be true. It couldn't be her. Dead…was dead…

He'd stood up because he couldn't imagine offering her a seat, sitting across a desk, and he'd barely made it up before she was inside, carefully and quietly closing the door, pushing on it a little to make sure it latched.

She'd sent Liara in first so he would have less of a shock, she was…

She was protecting him.

With that certainty he walked toward her, forgetting that this wasn't a wish fulfillment dream, that she hadn't been delivered to him so he could say everything he'd wanted to say, do what he wanted to do. The taste of his own blood was his primary sensation until he got close enough to smell that it was her.

She huddled back against the door, hand gripping the knob and about ready to flee with him bearing down on her with glowing Turian force.

His eye shifted to the only movement she made, a reflexive turning of the knob. no. No. NO. Fresh provocation like the flashing movement of prey attempting to run settled in his mind, combined with the full sense of knowing her best, guarding her memory. This overrode any sense of decorous reunion, had there ever been a chance of that.

He reached down and carefully moved her hand away from the knob, the fresh scent of her another shock, something breathed in from her and not from something that had touched her long ago. Strong. His. His hand moved with hers grasped in it, dwarfing her fingers and pulling them away from the door as far as her arm could go, until her hand was pressed to the line of his spine right above his waist. Her other arm scrabbled, his reflexes capturing that arm as well, twisting it behind her back, his hand entwined with hers, symmetrically pressed against her back at her waist, lifting her up so her body was pinned between him and the door.

All of her insistence that she could run away drained out of her, replaced by shocked flush and weakness, thinking "I really should have let Russ…"

His mouth moved to hers, a gentle nudge of cool to warm plate against her lips, his head turning to the side to brush his nose against the skin of her cheek. He breathed in deeply and let out his breath on a moan, that sound drugging, as irresistible as being remade to live again, his hands twisting around hers in steady caresses.

Tiny bursts of reality attempted to intrude on his reflexive intent. They tried to insist that she wasn't his, that he was treating her like some curated object in a museum, owned and taken. His visceral response was "Yes. Mine." Each breath rich with her scent, the stroke of his tongue on her lips…even the fact that she hadn't tried to kill him seemed to shore up that she was his. Her hands were tight in his, but making no move to escape, if anything pressing them closer together.

The pleasure-drenched touch of his tongue to hers shocked them both, the deepening sweetness of Reverie, anticipated by him, unknown to her. Chemistry that felt like destiny and everything right, lapping gently and infusing blood and mind. The primal need to mark, to claim her, gone too long and shaded with missed opportunity and regret, gripped him. He had her scent in his nose, her skin under his mouth and he needed her blood for bond. He kissed her with dual purpose, wanting her deep under Reverie, as deep as he was, all the longing of years and the divide of death spinning as pleasure spread out slick and hot with each beat of his heart.

Having never been kissed before, she had no idea that Reverie wasn't just what happened when anybody kissed. She had no will left over to question what was happening. It seemed to unfold like destiny. This is what it felt like, this is why she'd wanted this, imagined it and why she was lost. Being alive again made sense, this was what living was.

He kissed her for the suspended timeless pleasure of it, kissed her until he could feel the throb of her heart through her lips, under his tongue. He tilted his head and kissed a line down the column of her throat, touching his tongue to her skin, tasting her changing scent, sweat and heat and welcome. He bit down with care, sinking, sharp, four points of teeth until he drew blood. She didn't feel it as pain, far gone in Reverie, any pain transmuted into a wash of pleasure wherever his body touched hers.

Her blood on his tongue brought out a feral, possessive growl, the choice to bond closer to instinct than thought. She had been solely and completely his for so long, having placed her life, her heart in his hands. He knew he'd carried forward her mission, her dreams…her. Every day. Every single day since her death, nobody could, would love her more, honor or cherish her with his actions, with his body, with his life. Given one moment with her he wouldn't waste it.

He let go of the hand he'd held behind his back, lowered her to the floor carefully, wrapping that arm around her waist because she couldn't seem to hold her own weight up, which made him immensely satisfied. More of that. She was so tiny, delicate, his palm along her jaw line, his hand big enough to cradle the back of her head, hair tangling between his fingers.

She'd been tossed into the deep end of the water, floundering and stunned, sapped of will and betrayed by her body's inability to adapt, and when his mouth came back to hers, he was murmuring "Open to me, open for me, Lal." He hauled her up against his body, the words making her suddenly panic. She wanted him, but…not this way. She couldn't.

He doesn't even know my name. He doesn't know anything about me. This is the…unbearably attractive Turian Councilor who doesn't know a thing about who I am or what I want…or that this should be forever, and that I'm already open, not Turian, but I can't…not against a door, not with him, not ever.

She should have stopped him, should have…too late.

So she ran away. Flushed and shocked and weak and barely able to stand, she twisted out of his embrace and retreated as far as she could, behind a conference table, panting and trembling, holding on to the back of a chair for support.

He had seen her, first shock of his day, second shock was seeing her terrified, flushed and hiding behind a table. He really, really wanted to chase her and press her down on that table. Very badly. His. He narrowed his eyes, considering it, and she tensed, ready to bolt again.

His plates curved into a tight smile. It had still gone…very well…and it was a good day.

She watched him, unable to formulate words or objections that wouldn't provoke him to prove her wrong. She was the same Cara and he was clearly…a new Garrus.

Help.

Her father's voice said quietly 'I like him.'

Shut up, dad.

She heard her mother's laughter.

She pressed her lips together. She said carefully, the truth "I want to. I can't."

He was slightly mollified by the 'I want to' which was at least nice of her to admit with her voice as much as she had with her body. The 'I can't' was spoken in bleak Shepard tones.

He asked "Why?"

She wanted to close her eyes, but was too concerned about Turian speed and persuasion…and lack of personal fortitude.

Because I'm not who you think I am. Because you want sex and I want love. Because I am not what you want.

She said "You are the Turian Councilor."

He countered "I'm going with you. I'll concede the position."

She shook her head and said "You can't. Garrus. Think. I need you. Here. Everything you've done, everything you've set up, can you tell me that another Turian Councilor will help me fight Reapers?"

He crossed his arms over his chest "Oh, no. You're back and I get to choose my own life."

She shook her head again "I'm back and even I don't get to choose my own life. I have to be Commander Shepard. You have to be Councilor Vakarian. I can't…be involved with you."

He felt the chosen bond pound through his blood and he considered again that conference table…then swore softly and said "So you're telling me I have to stay here, I can't be near you, I can't keep you alive, I have to throw you back out there into the storm and wave goodbye?"

Her lip trembled and she said "Yes. I'm still me. A very expensive me with expectations of bravery…and not destroying everything you've worked for. Turians rely on you to guide them. Are you going to tell me that if you went back onto the Normandy, and I had you on my 6, which I would love…that the Citadel would hold itself together? I'm aiming to be a Council Spectre again, here, if they'll let me. You want some other Turian telling me what to do or do you want to be the only Turian that can tell me what to do?"

He laughed, affection and admiration along with the pounding blood. She was…damn her, she was right about that. The Citadel unraveled itself daily, faster than he could repair her. Nobody could replace him here, nobody that he could rely on to hold together what he'd built. He said "I want to be with you, Lal. I have…for years. That's not going away." It's especially not going away now that I've bonded.

She shrugged and said "Fine, let's just…get rid of the Reapers first."

He heard the "Fine" and the surrender there, and then the quintessential Shepard grit and determination in the word "Reapers."

He growled "You have a disturbingly inflexible one-track mind."

She laughed and said "Yeah. That's why I'm so expensive."

He pointed to a spot directly in front of him "Stop hiding behind a table. I'm not going to…okay, I want to…but I'm not going to…Lal. Come here."

She skirted the table gingerly. This was Garrus. Without consent…he wouldn't. She quickly reminded herself she really didn't know him anymore, but…he was glowing. Still glowing. Always glowing. And she really wanted to touch him again, and wouldn't. She moved to where he indicated and he took her hands again, gently. He said "Lal Shepard. I am yours and have been for a long time. I'm not sorry and never will be for taking your scent, your skin, your blood. You decide when you belong to me in return."

He pointed to the center of his crest. "I decided this is your mark. Your colors. I've had you written on my face for two years, Lal. I should have told you what you meant to me, and I wish we'd had more time. Now you know. I don't, and won't regret it."

She stared at him, then drew his face down to kiss the painted lines on his crest. She said solemnly "Thank you, for everything you've done…and I wish…I really wish that things were different."

He lifted his head and looked down at melting green eyes framed in flushed red. "We'll make them different."

She wrapped her arms around him and he pulled her tighter, crest on her hair.

He said lightly "So, Reapers, huh? Again?"

She nodded her head "I'm afraid so."

He sighed "Yeah. Well, Liara's right. It's definitely you. And you're going to be difficult?"

She nodded against his chest "Difficult and expensive."

He said with a shake of his head "Just like old times."


	8. Chapter 8

Garrus was…maybe…not going to pin her to a conference table, but he did not consider letting her go either. Everything outside this room could wait. Everyone. Reverie and bond were streaming through his blood. She was in his arms and he needed to savor that. Those were miracles, but he wanted, needed more. Her words "I want to, but I can't" were playing in his mind. He examined their implications to discover any wedge he could bring to bear to break 'but I can't' away from that sentiment and replace it with 'and I will.'

He said softly "So…about this 'want to but can't' thing…"

Her heart was slamming painfully in her chest, the change in her mental state alarming. She was scrambling to put everything back where it was supposed to be. She was trying to get used to being a science project, hoping everything was where she'd left it in her head, and he'd scattered it all "Garrus…let me go."

To that request specifically and in general he snorted and said "Absolutely not. Don't want to, won't."

Pleasure and guilt spiraled through her, the feel of his lips on hers had felt beyond right, but contrasted with the fact that he did not even know her name, wanted Commander Shepard…Impossible. False Pretenses. That was suitable to be another one of her aliases. She couldn't make reality hold still to examine, thoughts kept slipping away into wanting to kiss him again. And she couldn't. She knew she couldn't, but her body was rioting. She said "I can't…think…"

He said a satisfied "Good." He compromised between the conference table and taking his hands off her. He lifted her in his arms and walked to an enormous side couch built for Turians that she would disappear into on her own. He sat down, positioned her in his lap so he could see her face, with her leaning back against his supporting arm. He said "We've worked out that you're alive. Now we figure out the rest."

She thought 'I'm inexperienced, hypersensitive and wanting to run. I've figured that out.' She said "The…I can't…stands. But I still can't think." This was not normal. Fast paced mindlessness and then adrenaline and guilt, and she was shaking. She was not normal. She was put back together wrong. She tried to move off his lap.

There was no way he was going to allow that, his hand tightening on her arm, his other arm around her waist like a lap belt. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back. Vertigo. She said "I think I'm sick."

He stroked her hair back and said "Dizzy?"

She nodded. He smiled and asked warmly "Weak?"

She nodded. His smile widened. He replied "You're not sick, Lal. Turian kissing does that."

She opened her eyes and stared at him, assuming he was teasing. She said "Turians make me sick?"

He shook his head solemnly "No. It's called Reverie. Humans have endorphins and hormones, we do too. I kiss you…you begin to experience all sensory input as pleasure, and so do I."

She jerked her head up higher, dizzy but fascinated. This hadn't been included in her Turian research. "You're kidding."

He shook his head again "Not kidding. I will always be happy to demonstrate."

She held up a hand and said "I will take your word for it. Do not…demonstrate. I need to get out of here conscious."

He said "I don't think that's necessary. You've recently been dead. A little unconsciousness should be fine." He tilted his head down so his crest was pressed to the side of her head, and said "I am not sorry my first impulse on seeing you was to kiss you. Look at me, look at where I am. I thought about you every day. Your last words to me in your Omni Tool message were 'I would have liked to have more time.'"

She flushed again, a deep rush of embarrassment on top of the crackling and raw vulnerability already stretched along her nerves. Reverie was leeching from her system, adrenaline crashing, leaving a tremor and the feeling of exposure that had always made her run. He'd found her message…something done entirely on impulse when she'd written a will, excited to have something worth giving. Feeling brave because…well…she'd be dead. What she said wouldn't matter. She tried to remember exactly what she'd said, it was mostly a haze of pressured silly and introducing stuffed animals? Oh no.

He said carefully "Now…we have more time. You made me a few promises right before you died. One was to see me when you were on the Citadel. One was to not protect me."

She winced and said "I lied about the not protecting you part. I can't…and won't keep that one, never intended to."

He smiled and said "I knew that the moment I realized you sent in Liara alone and then tried to obstruct the view through the doorway. But you are not lying about wanting to be with me. I know that's true."

She breathed short huffs from her nose "That's true, but I…I don't know you. You don't know me."

He jutted his jaw and said "You also told me in your message that I knew enough…that you knew I would understand…and that you not telling me didn't matter." She swallowed hard and he told her "You weren't lying."

She said "I also thought I was dead…" This was getting worse. She was about to choke on the constriction of personal failure compared to watching Fleet and Flotilla too many times.

Garrus said "We can change that I don't know your stories. You want me to stay Councilor. I will do that. For you, and because…yeah…Reapers. But when you tell me you can't be with me at all, I have a problem with that."

It was her first challenge on her first few days back, her mind sliding with Turian…Reverie-sex-magick-something…an impossible something she shouldn't want, definitely could not have. She repeated some of the logic that had gotten her one step into his office and no further "I have a job to do. I have to be that person. I have to think first about the mission…and the mission includes a Turian Councilor who does not appear to be involved with a human Spectre. Not only is it culturally enough to make you bare faced, but it is a conflict of interest. A huge…conflict of interest. For both of us. I trust that you have my best interests at heart. That is…the problem. You need to represent Turian interests. I can't jeopardize that. You…have been a successful Councilor for a year. I should not have to explain this. You know this better than I do. You just don't…want it to be true."

The reality of bond was flush under his skin and he knew that to be the truth. She was alive. It didn't matter what the other truths were, she was alive and he was bonded and he was not, would not, be deterred from convincing her. It would take time. He said gently "I know you're alive and yesterday I did not know that. I have made my life choices based on you being dead. I will…stay Councilor and do my job…I will not…accept that I am severed from you. Give me time to understand. I can promise you that there is no surveillance here. I promise you if we are to be seen by witnesses, I will be Councilor Vakarian and you will be Commander Shepard. But you must know, Garrus Vakarian was in love with Commander Shepard before she died. Garrus Vakarian will still treat you as he did then. We have a relationship that already existed, promises and hopes that already existed. Regardless of your preferences of impartial representation, it is unlikely that anybody will believe it anyway. You placed Anderson on the Council and I rose to power on the strength of tight alliance with him, your mission and your hacking skill. I have used your name and influence shamelessly to keep the fight of the Reapers alive. For now…give me time to get to know you, for you to explain who you are now. Get to know me. We can do that privately, and I will keep you safe."

She closed her eyes and her shoulders dropped in trembling exhaustion, trying to navigate. She wanted to get a promise of 'no kissing' and she thought he'd laugh at that, and she was not going to do that while in his lap. Do not provoke Councilor Vakarian into proving the extent of his determination and power. New rule. She tried to navigate the internal wreckage of Commander Shepard versus Cara Fanning, and said "I will give you one absolute truth. Then you've got to let me up."

He considered. He didn't want to, but he really did have to let her up at some point in the day. He said "Deal, but negotiation is not over, not for the day, and not for the future. I'll give you an absolute truth. I just bonded to you."

She was shock hobbled. Again. Humans knew what bonding was, at least in the exclusionary sense. Humans knew they didn't, couldn't do it. Turians bonded for life, a biological change that 'tuned' a pair to each other. With the knowledge of Reverie added in, it made much more sense than the vaguely spiritual attitude Turians had toward it when they tried to describe its social significance. It wasn't like marriage where a divorce was possible. Bonding was a biological choice, it was pointed out to humans often by Turians that their social structure was so much more stable than humans, their relationships so much more civilized and permanent. So…both bonding and Reverie were transferrable to humans? Or did Garrus just throw his chance away entirely on a human? That's what he'd meant…skin, scent and blood. He'd taken what he'd wanted his first chance. In the spirit of truth and being entirely overwhelmed she said "I can't tell you I know what that means, except that as a human I know you shouldn't have done it and I don't deserve it in the eyes of every other Turian…" It wasn't done, like any number of other transgressions it would likely make him bare faced if known. "Garrus…my first day back…" She felt a kinship that maybe wasn't that bizarre, considering he'd always glowed. A shared sense of all in, from different directions. She looked at him, realizing he was in for a life, for love, not for the sex, and now he would no longer have that option with another woman. Bonding was permanent, irreversible. She drew his face again down, kissed the marks on his crest and said "I've never had a relationship with anybody. That was my first kiss."

He lifted shocked eyes to hers, she smiled and blinked once and said "Deal's a deal. Let me up."

That was…unexpected. He let her up, but she still had to lean on his shoulder to stand, then she barely made it to a chair while he sat stunned, staring at her. She said "You bonded to Commander Shepard…and there's a lot to learn about who she is not. You deserve better, Garrus."

He'd promised her he'd let her go and he was going to keep his word and absorb the cumulative shocks of the day. He started to laugh.

She looked up at him blearily.

He said thoughtfully "Well, first, there is nobody better…and second…you're saying I don't have any competition."

She sighed and answered "You are the only person I have ever considered…and just considering it gave me panic attacks. Will give me panic attacks. Is actively creating panic. So you…can't…have a relationship with anybody else…no pressure there…and I…haven't…had a relationship and…shouldn't. Won't."

He said calmly, and he felt calm, one thing about her that he now knew, one thing about him given that she knew and apparently accepted and didn't blame him for deviance. Instead she immediately tried to protect him. Again. He teased "Well, yesterday you were dead, now you're alive. Yesterday I was not bonded, now I am. Things change quickly here on the tower." He began to acknowledge with reality sliding back in sharp and hard that he needed to think, recover and regroup. He said lightly "I'm going to start guessing at these terrible secrets I don't know."

She closed her eyes and sighed.

He stood up, looked down at her and said with overwrought mock sympathy "Have you killed a man?"

She laughed, which led to a goofy snorting that made him smile. She looked up at him, said wryly "They're not that interesting as secrets go." I'm not that interesting, Garrus. You don't want a woman who spends all her spare time…reading.

He stroked a finger along her cheekbone and said "Liar." He stepped to his desk and the change in his voice was in comparison wintry. "Please get me Councilor Anderson and ask him to come to my office. Order some food, two humans, two Turians, and an Asari. In five minutes invite in Spectre Orbestan and Dr. T'Soni."

She sighed and hoped the flush would fade from her face in five minutes.

He said "We're going to have a business meeting and then you and I are going to have dinner. You have a standing obligation."

She said wearily "Stop telling me what to do."

He laughed and said "Please, have dinner with me Lal. My apartment. No surveillance. We'll talk."

She said firmly "No kissing."

"You are no fun." 

She waved a hand "This is what I'm telling you."

He said "Say yes."

She emphasized again "Stop telling me what to do…"

"You pointed out I was the only Turian who could."

"I'm still a dead Spectre, not an active Spectre. But okay. Yes."

He noticed she didn't secure his promise to not kiss her, but he'd honor her request. He was gratified that if she was this difficult, it wasn't just with him, it was with everybody and he was…special. He didn't have everything he wanted…yet…but she was alive, and by the Spirits, he would someday. He just had to keep her alive until then. He walked back to her chair and offered her his hand and said "There won't be a problem with you being restored to Spectre status. Stand up. No more slouching. Commander Shepard time. Plans to be made."

Her head had…mostly cleared…and he was glowing…and she was so happy to see him…and kissing was really lovely…and…right. She stood up and he escorted her to the chair where she'd retreated to when she'd run away from him, pulled it out for her. She sat. She said gratefully "Thank you, Garrus. For everything." She smiled and admitted "Kiss included."

He sat next to her and said a heartfelt "You are welcome. Thank you for being alive." He gazed at her for a moment and then focused on the means to keep her alive. Councilor Vakarian and Commander Shepard began their meeting. "For right now, what do you need?"

She focused, an emotional residual glow from being retroactively supported and loved. Everything Liara and Garrus had done…and she'd only seen some of it. She wanted to know everything "I need to go over the Normandy technically. I need to know she's solid and safe, no surveillance. I need technical assistance on upgrades. I need to know if I'm a Spectre. The Illusive Man has given me dossiers of people he would like me to recruit, and I will consider them, but I want to draw from other possible recruitment sources. I need to know my intel is solid, my ship is sound and my crew can be trusted. I need everything on Reapers and Collectors. I need a new Omni Tool. I need everything on missing colonies."

They were interrupted by Russ and Liara being escorted in. Garrus gestured for them to take a seat.

Russ wandered past Garrus, then stopped and leaned in slightly to look at Lal's neck and said "You got a little…Vakarian on you…right…there." He pointed and she could feel the warmth of his fingertip close to her skin, highlighting...oh…oh no. Bite marks. And there went her massive blush.

Garrus looked at Russ getting closer to her and said quietly "Don't touch her." He was surprised to say it, but absolutely did not want her scent altered, definitely did not want anybody to touch where he had marked her.

Russ smirked, seemingly satisfied with his assessment of the situation. He shrugged, taking no apparent offense but a great deal of amusement. He moved to the other side of the table across from Garrus and sat down with a casual slouch, which still left him taller than anybody else at the table. He teased "Just thought maybe Anderson shouldn't see it, but you know, if you're fine with that…I mean, I didn't know it was THAT kind of meeting." He started to laugh and said "I hoped though."

Lal's head thunked on the table and Garrus recovered from the unaccustomed threat he'd issued. Russ understood, he was sure of it. He was among friends, true friends, and grateful for it, Liara trying to protect him from Shepard, Shepard trying to protect him from the worlds, Russ trying to protect him from Anderson's sharp eyes. He should do a better job protecting them. He leaned forward and spread Medigel over four tender points on her neck carefully. She whispered "You left them there on purpose."

Russ laughed harder and Garrus said "In my defense, I was in shock and reaaaaaally distracted." He addressed Liara and Russ and said "I just bonded to her, without asking. She was also in shock and really distracted."

Lal whimpered "Garrus…"

Liara breathed "Congratulations…"

Russ stopped laughing for a shocked moment and then laughed harder. "Congratulations!" He said to Garrus. He put his head down on the table to direct his voice to Lal "Bet you wish you'd let me come in with you now, Shepard."

Garrus said quietly "It will be discovered on my next physical, maybe even my next scan. Maybe sooner if I start threatening anybody who gets near you. Sorry, Russ."

Russ shrugged "No offense taken. I wouldn't have. Big day. Didn't disappoint."

Garrus nodded to him gratefully and said "Lal, bonding won't stay a secret, medically or…socially. I can conceal the…target of my bond…but not that I'm bonded. I'm guessing that with your return, there will be speculation. Can't be helped. These two people…in this room…you can trust with your life, and everything in it."

She breathed a shocked and accusing "Which two people?" She repeated it again "You did it…on purpose…"

He didn't try to deny that he hadn't wanted to remove the marks. He did it about as on purpose as he had bonded with her. "Okay. Three people. I am still not necessarily a nice person. I am a determined one. I'm also starting to think that bonding…has consequences. I don't know what they are and I am not all that much in control of myself. All I knew is that those marks belonged there. Remember, distracted. Reeeeally distracted. You're newly alive, I'm sure you can understand."

She wanted to get angry, but that was the problem…she didn't get angry, she didn't swear, she was helpless, vulnerable and terrified about what one distracted kiss and not-in-control choice would cost them…and by extension others.

Garrus's hand was on her shoulder, massaging lightly. He said gently "Lal, sit up, Anderson will be here soon. We don't want him thinking you're dead. Hopefully we've learned some lessons about lessening shock. Between the four of us in this room, there is no need for secrets."

She sighed and tried to Shepardize herself. She had to be up to it, she didn't have a choice. She sat up and said "I apologize for the position this puts you in, Liara and Russ. I appreciate the help, the discretion and that this is a burden you did not choose. Russ, I don't know you personally, but if Liara and Garrus trust you, I have no doubts of your discretion. Once I'm back up to speed, I look forward to working with you." She thought 'with less whimpering.'

Russ said reassuringly "Garrus has never once missed an opportunity to bring up Commander Shepard's legacy. This is really just more of the same. You're looking at a not surprised Turian. If it's a burden, it's been the same for two years. Somehow we still get work done."

She was reassured and grateful and kept her mouth shut.

Garrus addressed Russ and Liara "She is concerned about close association, much less bond, diminishing my power base and creating conflict of interest distractions."

Russ turned his face to look at Shepard speculatively. She wondered if he thought she was capable of independent thought, despite all evidence to the contrary. So much for the legend. Bleeding and head thunked. "She's not wrong, Garrus."

Garrus looked at Russ and said "No, unfortunately, she isn't. We cannot have a public relationship. In fact we haven't had a relationship before now. I got very much carried away. I'm still not sorry. Anyway, Russ, you helped Liara two years ago. You knew about Shepard's body and Cerberus and didn't say a damned word to me about it?"

Russ nodded with a twist to his lips "Yeah. We thought you might…overreact."

Garrus could not possibly refute that prediction "Well…that's fair. Does anybody else know?"

Liara said softly "No. Yorlas and Ginavek knew…but they're dead."

Russ's jaw clenched slightly and Garrus said quietly "And they also would never have told anybody. Okay. Russ, I'd like you to go with Lal. I need you on that ship. I can't go. Lal has…convinced me…that I have to stay here. I don't like it. Liara can't go. Lal doesn't know it yet, but you're the best there is."

Lal heard Garrus asking and not the Councilor. A personal favor. She wanted to object, he was a Spectre in his own right, her own jaw clenching with the effort to keep her ignorant mouth shut and not argue. She was not caught up. Do not insult both of them.

Russ nodded "Okay. Can I get you to write that down and sign it, that 'best there is' thing?"

Garrus muttered "Hire a calligrapher, I'll sign it."

Russ waved a hand in dismissal and said "You'd still have to work the name Shepard in there somewhere. There'd be an asterisk." But he looked satisfied and sat back, content to allow planning to continue, his focus on Garrus.

Lal tried to focus on beginning command from the bottom rung. She had nobody right now. She did not trust Cerberus personnel. She'd feel so much better if Russ were glowing. Something. Even just a little flash…

Russ caught her looking at him and smiled as though he could read what was written inside her bones, and he probably could. Her eyes slid away.

Lal said "Why not put me under Russ's command?" How's that for original thought?

There was a long silence. Russ broke it and said "I appreciate the vote of confidence. You've worked out that Garrus is a figurehead, and that is politically priceless. I figured he'd bust out of here with a rifle. You convinced him in a short amount of time not to do that, congratulations. None of the rest of us could have. What someone needs to tell you is that the same restriction and requirement of perceived power…if not more so…applies to you. You're the… reincarnated… Savior of the Citadel. We'd be fools to discard the opportunity to exploit that. We are not fools. Now I've heard a lot about you, and I haven't seen much myself, but I bet if you couldn't shoot a gun and could barely think your way out of a paper bag, I could prop you up and make your reputation sing. What you need to get done, I will help you get done. I'm good. I'm just not you. Welcome to being a figurehead. Get used to it. We need you. Garrus is stuck in this office and you're stuck being the Commander."

She stared at him, appreciating the blunt appraisal. "Excellent, I'll have a cape made." She really hoped she could still shoot.

Russ answered "Hire a calligrapher. We can't afford any asterisks."

She said bluntly "Good, keep telling me what I need to hear."

Russ smiled "Count on it."

They were interrupted by Anderson's entrance. It was his turn to be shocked, Liara explaining quietly as he stared. He stared for a little longer. Everybody let him do it, and she had her Shepard face on. She knew there were five people in the room she could trust. So did everyone else. He sat down hard and said "Welcome back, Commander Shepard."

She said softly "Thank you, Councilor Anderson."

From there it was straight to strategy and business. Teams would be dispatched to the Normandy from Council, Alliance, Hierarchy and Shadow Broker resources, supplemented by some shady people Russ recommended.

They chose to not disclose that Commander Shepard was back just yet. She'd stay at a Council safe house and Russ would be present if she needed security checks for now.

Anderson suggested reassigning Kaidan Alenko to the Normandy.

So in theory she had a squad, a loyal squad. A good starting place to build a full team. Two Council Spectres and an Alliance high-ranking officer she could trust. That would certainly build confidence. It built hers.

They agreed that Cerberus's intel and resources were key to the proposed mission of addressing the Collectors.

On the subject of indoctrination, she was told that they knew the mechanics, had for about six months. At least one method involved injection of a substance that caused a neural net to form that hooked into the pain/pleasure centers of the brain and hijacked them when combined with verbal conditioning. Individuals on the Citadel were scanned once a week to examine the brain and the potentially affected centers. She had been exempt because Liara had provided scans ahead of time and Russ had vouched for her. She would not be exempt once Commander Shepard was brought back into the public eye. Cerberus had installed scanners on the Normandy Med Bay and Dr. Chakwas was well versed in their use.

EDI was a major concern and that would require a great deal of work, depending on how much of the Normandy's systems were insidiously managed. On that note, Russ had a ship of his own. They'd prefer the Normandy and Shepard as a figurehead set, but if the ship was out of commission for too long due to evaluation and retooling, that was a possible mode of transport.

As for her job, putting out Reaper fires, there was a target-rich environment. Point in any direction and there was something she could do, someone she could save. This however was an opportunity to take advantage of Cerberus's resources and intel. Focus on team and Collector activities, find out how they worked, what they were up to. It was an excellent starting point. Any other mission she felt needed to get done that her team could not do, coordination with other Spectres, the Hierarchy and the Alliance would take care of it.

Her Spectre reauthorization should not be a problem, she was assured. Unlikely the Asari Councilor would need any convincing, and the Salarian Councilor had been seeking authorization for a pet project, they could assure funding and cooperation in exchange. Garrus and Anderson both felt it could be arranged quickly. They'd broach that last, after the Normandy and personnel vetting was complete.

She had…a lot of studying to do. She was excited, had questions she squelched, kept her mouth shut for the most part.

Russ had prevented surveillance of her entry into this office, and Garrus's staff could be counted on to keep their mouths shut.

She was actually going to get a cape. Well, a cloak. And a face screen that obscured her features.

She was very happy with immediate plans. She could sit in a room and study. Russ seemed to consider that a death sentence. She tried to look brave.

The meeting took hours, two separate deliveries of food. They'd begun in late morning, it was now early evening. People broke off into assigned tasks. Anderson left first, Russ second, and then Liara after a lingering hug and a smile.

After they'd gone Garrus said "So turns out we shouldn't go to my apartment, but the safe houses are in this complex. No security checks." He explained on the way there, through a concealed side door and a warren of authorizations "Lots of hidden Citadel tower secrets. I have an apartment, but for security lockdown and just sometimes late nights, Councilors stay on the tower. Lots of housing for staff and visiting dignitaries."

He escorted her into a small, but richly appointed apartment. He authorized the research terminal, food delivery from local kitchen that either made it or had it delivered to them by proxy and a credit account attached.

Nerd heaven. No interruptions. If only it had its own kitchen…

He had promised no kissing, so he was still going to honor that, but…he picked her up to a startled "Oh!" and smiled, sat down again on a smaller couch, arranged her so he could see her face. He said "It's late. I'm staying. Here, on the couch."

She didn't try to argue.

He said "One more truth to tell, I won't ask for one in return. Hale passed away seven months ago." He brought his Omni Tool around and began entering in access keys "I…talked to him often. Spoke to his owners, and learned from them that they had begun to record you. If they replayed it later apparently he'd be slightly less…destructive at certain times. So…I asked them to send the recordings to me. There are dozens of you talking to him, five or six of me talking to him. Here's the last time I talked to him, about eight months ago."

Tears sprang to her eyes as she listened to Garrus talk awkwardly to Hale, who didn't move much but his ears twitched and he faced the screen as Garrus informed him of an impressive bust of a pirating ring that he'd been after since he was in C-Sec. She reached out her fingertips to trace the outline of George Ellery Hale's elder statesman cat form, dignified and frail.

She said softly after it had ended "He liked the explosions. Sometimes I put them in where they didn't really belong. Just to keep him entertained."

He laughed and said "Yeah, I…saw…but I could never bring myself to do them. Yours were so good, I would feel like an explosion fraud. He's…well, he has a headstone. We could go visit if you'd like. You could tell him all about it."

She didn't want to see any more, couldn't look, and managed to say "I'd like that" before she turned her head into the sheltering dark of his chest and cried until her sobs were trailing and thin, shudders and wisps.

He linked his fingers lightly with hers across her thigh and said nothing, held her as she cried, until she fell asleep, thinking that he knew enough about her, he just needed to prove it.

'I promise, Lal, I'll tell you all about it.'


	9. Chapter 9

Garrus watched over her, the quiet calm of her sleeping contrasted with his mind and body rioting and insistent. He had been driven and dedicated while she was dead, he was proud of the path he'd followed in her name. He'd make her proud.

He watched her face, memorizing the curves and lines of her. He breathed in her scent and contemplated the strength of that in contrast to how…very small she was. She was now the biologically literal center of his world where before she had only been metaphorical, but still overpowering in grief and determination. Now, this fragile woman who ran away from him and trembled, who melted under his hands and moaned, was the key to so many things.

He'd been invested with her Spirit, what she'd created in her lifetime, contradictory and passionate, certain and tentative. Now he wanted to drop everything he'd built and follow her, two paces behind, his rightful place, as she needed. As he needed. It blurred and he could not tell any longer what was right or full of purpose, but he did know he needed.

She had given him the wrong and empty answer…and he would follow that…his rightful place.

He watched her and contemplated beauty. He was from a culture that prized strength and power, and her body had none of that with her eyes closed. She was even by human and Asari terms thin, small, pale to the point of wondering if she could be ill because of the contrast between transparent skin with veins visible under the surface of eyelids and wrist and vivid red hair. When her eyes were open the sea of green gave her all the life and strength she needed. She now defined beauty for him, she was the standard.

Questions spawned from circumstances. Was she in fact ill? Was she not attracted to him?

About illness he did not know.

But…he had from her own mouth…so to speak…proof that she wanted him. Was it enough?

It had to be.

He contemplated two paces behind.

Russ had been right, he would always…overreact…with this woman. He was also right that she was the only person who could limit his reactions, tell him his place.

Whatever limitations and concerns he had for her body, small and limited and prone to break, her Spirit remained, and he trusted her despite her protestations and warnings of dire secrets.

He watched as she slept, more iterations of the same thoughts, remembrances of what her lips felt like under his mouth, her hands twisted in his.

She was a wealth of present and future possibility, and not having all of her was dwarfed by the reality of having anything of her to hold for any amount of time.

He did not sleep, unwilling to lose a moment.

He watched over her, wondering if she would have nightmares, comforted by her trying to get closer to him in her sleep. His intellect and reason were at the moment remote, but echoes of them made him afraid to sleep. He believed his body would take the driving force of need and find a way to wake up, choice made for both of them, his body finding home and heat. She was too much…his…and the same way marks on her throat were what was unquestionably best, so would be finding out exactly what it felt like to consummate his bond. The way she moved closer, the way clothing would not stop him, the way he… disagreed… vehemently… about not touching her. She'd be sleepy and forgetful, and even if she weren't, he would make her that way, roll her onto her back and stake down her body in with his own, kiss her until she was melting moans. She would say yes. Whatever she was afraid of would rise off her like fog, she would not only say yes, but he would make certain that she insisted. Begged. He would create a need and then oblige her, Reverie and two paces behind. He would make every secret she held close meaningless. There would be no secrets or concerns, only a truth.

Spirits, his plates were spreading and he had to shift, not uncomfortably but a confirmation of too damned comfortable with a certain outcome. Flooding images of her made all his prior imaginings thin and powerless. She was a drug, and he was an addict, and he had to accept the gift of her presence with a need for vigilance, or he would fail.

Spirits, yes, please fail.

No.

Fuck.

She slept through the night and when she woke he arranged for breakfast. He was solicitous and gentle, some measure of hours spent in trancelike contemplation as bond took hold making him compromise between lust and contentment. Each moment was a gift, and that was his truth.

Lal woke to warm blue eyes and his smile, the hard comfort of his body through the night something that had made her unwilling to come fully awake, opting always to savor the feel and scent of him with her eyes closed, sink back down into a place where she was comforted and watched over.

They both said good morning and they both heard and meant 'I love you' instead of those placeholder words.

She listened to him as he offered quiet breakfast options. She went to take a shower. Clothes had been delivered. Listening to his voice brought back what it felt like to be kissed, physically and emotionally, hands tangled in his…and now she had a night of warm arms and solicitous blue heat in his eyes, the subtle smile that played on his lips as he looked at her.

She was terrified.

While she was sleeping she must have clarified pieces of her emotional and professional puzzle.

This. This right here. The way he makes you feel just by sitting across a table and smiling…this is more tellingly intimate than a kiss. This is what your parents did, how they looked, how they felt. This is why…you are who you are…and why you have to pretend to not to be that person.

Tears stung at the corners of her eyes and she blinked them back. She listened to him describe his upcoming day, was promised company for lunch, he wished her luck on catching up…

When he left after a gently careful embrace and a touch of his crest to her hair, she closed her eyes and thought, feeling her way along rough impressions that would reveal their secrets when she touched them.

She didn't want to, because she could feel the growing answer, and she did not like it.

It all revolved around one solemn question, in her mother's voice. "Cara, what would I do for your father?"

Everything. The answer was everything, and she knew it. She knew if she committed to Garrus as he'd committed to her, she knew…there was nothing she would not do for him. She would give up command. He would ask her to give up command.

It was not about the Hierarchy, though she had framed it that way to him yesterday, before she knew about his bond. Turians would not accept her as his mate, and she would have tried to convince him to not put himself through that, but that did not matter anymore. He had made his choice. She would stand with him, against anybody, Hierarchy, parents, family, clan, Citadel… She would not care if he were barefaced or banished, if that was what he chose, she was with him.

That was just the simple answer. From there it got more complicated. What would happen if she committed herself entirely to him, told him exactly who she was, how she worked, her heart and soul and inside of her mind?

He would never allow her in the line of fire. He would ask her to stop, and she…would do…anything…for that man.

She would have no defense against loving him, a choice made with her idealistic devotion, all the passion she owned.

Maybe it was already done…she was already committed…she wanted to be, felt the commitment he'd made to her pull like gravity, like sleep, like desire.

But he didn't know that.

And now…he couldn't.

She had to be done with being Shepard before she could be Cara. If she could ever be Cara.

This was the essence of conflict of interest, inherent and total. Commander Shepard would not be able to make choices with Councilor Vakarian if Cara were Garrus's bond mate. He would kiss her…and she would give him…everything. No questions. Beyond that, forget securing her agreement verbally. He could certainly convince her of anything as she drowned in Reverie and devotion, desperate to make him happy…but if he had the right as her bond mate to protect her, she'd find herself drugged and carted across the galaxy for her own good because there was nothing he would not do to keep her safe.

She didn't believe that he'd find any of her secrets upsetting now, only endearing and ultimately advantageous to his agenda. She had lost her opportunity to blurt it all out, hope to find that he was no longer attracted to her. He was bonded, and she had been right, even prophetic in her ill-advised will confessional. He knew enough about her.

Just think about what he'd say…

So you believe in true love, happening once, lasting forever? Wonderful. Me too. I proved it with my body and my bond. Let's both prove it with the rest of our lives.

So you idealize a state where vulnerability is key to happiness and ethics, where love is the highest denominator, deserving of investment of an entire life, everything that makes up a person? That's admirable and I agree completely. You've earned the right to live what you believe. I've earned the right to give it to you. I have an isolated moon chosen. We're both retiring effective immediately. We've done enough. Let harder people with less to lose continue the fight.

So…I…glow…when you look at me? Now that's just…fantastic. Am I glowing now? Then I must be right. I'll have your bags packed, we're leaving now.

That's what he'd do, or something close to it. He'd possibly be surprised, disbelieving at first, but he would test her and learn, and then be fast to capitalize. He was, as he'd stated…determined.

She would have absolutely no defense. No offense. He would know not to fear wrath or condemnation, her own nature working against any ambition to be Shepard. He could brush Shepard away like a veil and all that would be left…would be her.

Would that be so bad?

It would be blissful. They'd live their life out in safety and there was nothing she would not do for that man. He'd scour the paint from his face and declare she was all he needed, and it would be true. She could live out her life cooking and reading history about to be wiped from existence with the man she loved, and then the Reapers would descend just as slavers had on Mindoir. Not for them, they'd be too smart. They'd get away, but everyone else? Were there enough harder people with less to lose?

When had she successfully told him no?

Not yet, Cara. All you've managed to do is run away or avoid him. With bond he would be not only obliged and inclined, but fervently devoted to pursuit and capture. And you would want to be caught.

Russ's words echoed 'Welcome to being a figurehead. Get used to it. We need you. Garrus is stuck in this office and you're stuck being the Commander.'

You told him the truth, at least. Reapers. Difficult. Expensive.

You can tell him you love him, he should know that. You can't tell him anything else.

And when he asks?

You can't tell him anything else.

Get off the Citadel. Be Commander Shepard. Hold out the hope that you both survive the coming fight, but you know you can't fight…and…be his bond mate. You know he can't fight…and…be your bond mate. He knows enough, but if he completely understands, nothing will stop him. He'll do everything for you. For YOU. Not for the galaxy.

You have to convince him to do the right thing for everyone, and not let him know he already has the power to take that out of your hands.

She felt a sick, bitter wave of realizing how much power she had over him, and that she was contemplating how to evade reciprocity, and that was cruel. That was the way it had to be, not for her good or his, but for the balance of what Commander Shepard stood for. In the end, it was not Cara who had been brought back at great cost. She'd have to finish that job first.

And then…and then…and then whatever he wanted for the rest of her days. True love. Once. Forever. Anything.

So you need to make out another will, record another message, and remember that one kiss…and his promises…and the look in his eyes…and the sound of his voice…and his arms around you while you sleep…

So she began her real first day as potentially Commander Shepard crying in the shower for an hour and a half, trying to think of all the ways to protect herself from being protected.

oOoOoOoOoOo

What she decided was to tell her truth…but only so much of it…the part that belonged to him right now. The rest belonged to her.

So when he brought lunch, she ate dutifully and then to his questioning looks at her silence, stood up and put her hand out to his. He took it and stood, and she stepped into his embrace, leaned her head on his chest and was quiet for a long time, wanting to remember.

She said "I want to remember what you smell like, what you feel like, and I want to tell you a truth. A few truths."

Garrus looked down at the top of her head, slid his fingers in her hair, one around her waist, and said "I'm all yours."

She believed him.

She said carefully "I have a few rules. You can't ask why. I told you I needed time, but what I really need is the end of this war. I'm not telling you I can't be with you. I'm telling you I can't be with you now. Reverie…I can't. You can't kiss me."

He very carefully did not ask why, grateful in his own way that she hadn't decided he was unforgivably criminal in bonding without her consent. He said "I agree to that." He'd agree to whatever she asked, she was his law.

She relaxed her shoulders slightly and he pulled her a little closer when the shift put distance between them. She said softly "I love you. I really love you and if I could, I would run away with you this moment, go to the end of the worlds and live out my life learning what it means to be your bond mate. I should record that and hide it again somewhere so you can hear it, but this truth belongs to you. I don't love you because you bonded to me. I love you because I already did. I don't want you to regret that or think it was a wrong choice. I will…would…never regret that moment except that it might cause you pain because of what I have to do, who I have to be. Who we have to be."

He swallowed hard, moving his hand through her hair, his arm around her waist and hand at the curve of her hip. He hadn't exactly regretted…but he knew what she meant. To hear her say she loved him and had…he had a right to that, it wasn't stolen or forced. She'd already loved him. Cold, dark rooms in his mind warmed and filled with light, and her.

She said softly "So I love you and…will you accept that I can't tell you everything, that I can't kiss you, can't have sex… I want to, I do, but I can't. I want to be near you and I want to share your life as much as I can, within those bounds? I don't know if that's…an insult…to a Turian…to you."

Garrus closed his eyes, breathed in her scent and the words that meant he had a right to love her, and the words that meant he could not touch her as he wished. And he wished. He wished…a lot…and it only got stronger moment by moment. That was his own damned fault.

She was his law. Maybe she did or did not know that she was his Avah, replacing his mother as the woman having authority over his life. Even if she was human. Also because she was who she was. She hadn't agreed to it, but it was true, in his blood, in his heart, his life.

He said "Lal…"

She interrupted him quickly, unwilling to hear that name again from his lips without him knowing that it reminded her every time that he did not even know her name. She had only intended to tell him that she loved him, but one concession led to gravity demanding she tell him more. This had to be it, the last one. She said "One more…one more thing. One more truth. Please don't ask why… My name is Cara. Please don't look for my name, just hear it from me. You can call me Lal…and that's also a name I treasure…and someday I will explain, if I can. For right now…I just need you to know."

He swallowed hard, absorbing that. Was Shepard her name? He felt a hollow chill about the things he did not know about her, then did not care again. "Cara. I will want you every moment. Don't doubt it. But I am bound to you, body and heart and mind. You tell me I must stay Councilor, I will. You tell me not to kiss you, I will not kiss you. It's going to hurt…but you are alive. You want to share my life. You love me. I was already…not having sex…Cara. I spent years thinking of you, thinking you would never know, you were gone. You're here, you're alive, you love me. That's more than I dreamed could be true. I promise. I won't press you. I won't look into truths you're not ready to tell. Whatever burden that is to bear, for both of us, we do that together. Tell me you're mine, you will be my bond mate, you will be my law, and I will wait."

She whispered "I am yours. I will be your bond mate."

He whispered softly "You will be my law."

She was silent.

He repeated "You will be my law. That is what I need."

She squeezed her eyes shut, that bitter twist of having so much power over him, seemingly rejecting him and still asking him to honor the promise of his bond. She said "I don't want to be your law."

He laughed and brushed his plates against her hair, murmured "Liar. Cara…women rule Turian society. You are my Avah, the woman who guides my path, who rules my house. Even if you can't, even if you won't…you have to admit you've told me what to do and you want me to do it."

She acquiesced "Yeah, that would be hard to argue…but I wish…"

"We both wish. So was the kiss…that good…or that bad…that you don't want to repeat it?"

"Definitely that good."

"So you're afraid I'm just going to kiss you and…have my way, huh?"

"Yes."

"Hmm. Now there's a thought to keep me warm."

"Oh, me too."

He was still for a long moment and then his hand moved again through her hair as he asked quietly "I would like a promise from you."

"What is it?"

He smiled against her hair "I promise not to press you. I want you to promise…that you believe me, that I will follow your law…and that if you feel the urge…I want you to press me, Cara. Ask for what you want. Take what you want."

She closed her eyes. Oh no. Her mind flooded with the possibilities of having him hold still under her fingertips and lips, blue fire in his eyes and his hands to his sides.

She said hollowly "Trap."

He grinned and said "Just something to think about."

She repeated more determined "Trap."

He laughed and said "Think about it a lot, Cara."

oOoOoOoOoOo

EDI was a problem, she was hooked into everything, shackled, and they couldn't look at many of her directives.

Liara made a call to the Illusive Man, who reluctantly granted the override codes to make EDI and the Normandy transparent.

Russ promised that she was transparent…enough. For now. He would continue to fiddle with it. She wanted to fiddle herself. Enough to get off the Citadel and run a mission. The Illusive Man no longer had lockdown or override control, and it had been made clear that if he attempted it, Liara and Russ (and his ship and resources) would make it their first priority to find Cerberus home base. For now Russ had faith that the offer of a ship, stripped of its surveillance and many of its restrictions, would give them autonomy. For now, Russ's ship would shadow them, additional resources if required. He had some people he could recommend, some of them on missions of their own, when they were available he would arrange an introduction.

She thought their first step was to contact Professor Mordin Solus, who would help them with a particular Collector hazard, finding a counteragent to the seeker swarms that had been observed during Collector invasions.

A lot…of personnel were replaced.

Kelly's position was eliminated as unnecessary and in fact intrusive, asking a young human woman who loooooooved everyone to ask too many questions.

Miranda negotiated remaining on board, not as executive officer, as that would go to Russ, but as a potential team member. Miranda wanted to remain on at the least to monitor Shepard's health. She could help with scanning and Med Bay duties as well. She offered to work as a liaison to Cerberus in the same way that Russ would be a liaison to the Citadel and Kaidan would be a liaison to the Alliance. She convinced Lal she wanted the opportunity to help and could be an asset. Lal accepted.

She managed to get Engineer Adams back on board after Karin Chakwas made a request. She got quite a few support personnel back on that had been available on the SR-1 and had survived. Several Cerberus people passed all security checks and were retained.

Garrus was very busy, and so was she. He had a schedule, including evening events and private arrangements to prepare for the Normandy's launch and her being escorted back into the realm of the living. Other than missing half a day's engagements after her return, which was not unusual for a Councilor, he worked his normal overburdened schedule to create no retroactive impression that he was, in fact, aware that Commander Shepard was alive or that he was…say…bonded to her.

The Normandy SR-2 existing at all in a registry and a berth did result in official inquiries about a week and a half after her arrival when the owner of the vessel could not be verified. There were growing reporter requests to the Alliance and to the Citadel asking whether or not the ship was in exceedingly poor taste or representative of something else.

Anderson made a statement. "Commander Shepard had been verified as being alive and not an impostor. She had a new ship and is recruiting those who wished to fight on the front lines against the Collectors, believed to be Reaper agents." He also released a pre-recorded statement from her saying essentially the same thing. The Council released a joint statement saying that Commander Shepard had been restored to Spectre status.

It had been decided that a press conference or interview would be unnecessary and in keeping with the fact that she had never done them previously. All she needed was public legitimacy of the same sort she had when she had been alive the first time. She was, as she had always been, mostly known by reputation. With a ship and a crew, Russ and Kaidan and the Citadel's support (as well as Alliance, Hierarchy, Shadow Broker and Asari) she was in a position of being sought after, strategic scarcity. She would keep it that way.

Okay, so she only had lukewarm Salarian support…but the Salarian Union now had a new research project funded.

Garrus was asked about his reaction to Commander Shepard being returned to active duty and he replied "I guess I'm lucky I'm at a desk now, huh?" to laughter and then he said "Commander Shepard has my support. The Council has verified her identity and intentions, restored her to Spectre status and we all wish her the best of luck. With her joining back into the fight, the odds of success just got better. She's giving her second life back to the fight that killed her. Even though I am at a desk, I'll be doing all I can to increase the odds of success, I suggest everyone else do the same."

Garrus was her main visitor and company, which she enjoyed and decided she was, in fact, entirely in love and that was terrible and wonderful and inspired more sighing and crying. It was a new type of precious. How long that would last she did not know, but for now they shared brief meals and embraces, smiles and gratitude for the right to each other's company.

She got better up to mental speed, rapid overview of two years of history and the fight, delving into the SR-2's specs and EDI's makeup, dossiers that Cerberus forwarded and Liara recommended.

He often could not make it to visit during the day, but he spent nights on the tower, which was also not unusual. She got into the habit of Garrus bringing food by late evenings. He'd have his own workload, so they'd both work on Omni Tools, hers new. She'd named this Omni Tool Lilac and set her to that color. He'd hand her food and she'd occasionally remember to eat it. He'd persist until it was finished, she'd ask him if he knew about something like the new surgical technique and inhibitor developed to deal with indoctrination survivors. She suspected he knew more than she did…but he'd always say no and listen to her enthusiastic interest, occasionally offering her a bite of food or a stroke to her hair as she talked. He'd pile up pillows so she could lean against him without being punctured, and they'd talk until she got tired. She'd kiss the marks on his crest. He'd press his crest to her hair. She'd go to sleep in the other room. He'd stay on the couch.

Sometimes she didn't leave, opting to stay on the couch with him by default, warm gravity and not only the lack of will to leave, but the growing will to stay.

She thought about pressing him. A lot.

oOoOoOoOoOo

By his second scan since her return it was determined that Garrus was bonded.

He played his recorded statement for her while she turned her head from the pillowed refuge of his lap.

"There have been three serious attempts on my life since I have taken office as Councilor and myriad threats made. I am grateful that C-Sec works as hard as it does to protect me, and I do not wish to overburden them. Unfortunately at this time, announcing the woman I love to the worlds would be placing her in danger. I am proud and lucky to be bonded to her, but for her own safety I will not disclose who she is. She is my heart. I promise my loyalty, my hard work and my continued service to the office of Turian Councilor. I will work for worlds where she can safely stand at my side and not be a target of abduction, assassination or indoctrination. I ask you to respect my choice and know I will work harder and with more dedication than I have in the past. After this announcement I will not discuss her. My office will not address any questions regarding her. I wish to draw no attention to her and I will not be drawn into conversation about her. For excellent reason I choose to separate my private from my professional life until such time as the danger is past. As part of my routine scans this was detected. I would prefer to keep it secret but we live in times where we must all agree to scanning. I support continued scanning. This is a medical disclosure because my scans face scrutiny and I accept that as part of the office I hold. I defer the social announcement to a later time where she and I can celebrate with family without cause for fear. I have more to hope for, more to live for, more to work for, with her promising to be at my side when she can, when it will be a celebration and not an invitation to more potential harm. We have all lost enough. This is a time in history when we change not only our own futures, but the futures of every living, sentient species who faces the same fate. I choose now, and I urge you to choose with me that there are people we love, those people are worth everything. For now I am lucky. I have more to fight for, I have the opportunity to be dedicated to the greater fight because I am in love."

She started to cry and his arms tightened around her. She was afraid to say anything, because she would trip over every word, demand to be carried off, carried away.

She would press him. Hair trigger, no force, just a millimeter's distance between her and that choice.

Please, that.

Instead she whispered "Think they'll buy it?"

He looked down at her, and thought 'not even for a moment, not if they see me with you' and said "That's the only thing I'm selling, they don't have much choice."

She had to get off the Citadel.


	10. Chapter 10

She tried to leave the tower on her own, cloaked and masked, but the labyrinthine security stopped her. She really did not want to hack her way out of the tower. Okay, mostly she did not want to get caught. She'd brushed up on current hacking techniques, but she had a lot still to learn and the Citadel Tower was not the best place to find out she sucked. She did have a back door into Citadel control, something she'd arranged before she'd died…but she was not going to risk exposing that just because she was a coward. She loved her nerd's paradise, but she had to break out, face reality, get back to where she had some control over her own life, away from Garrus.

She had Spectre codes, but she'd gotten into the tower on Councilor security protocols, and a Spectre might have powers, but overriding Councilor authority was not one of them.

Something she was sure Garrus appreciated.

She was thinking waaaaay too much about…pressing.

She did not watch Fleet and Flotilla once. Self defense.

Every day he became more attractive until she was afraid she was going to stick to him like a magnet, unable to be pried off. She counted giddy minutes until he arrived. He smelled good. She fantasized about pressing her lips to the side of his throat. She wanted to know what he tasted like, warm and spiced. She closed her eyes, imagined breathing in, touching her tongue to his hide…it wouldn't be against the rules. No Reverie…and he'd…

She blushed to full alert and startled herself out of that fantasy. No. No, you can't. First disastrous steps.

He'd keep his word.

He'd keep his word right up until he realizes he does not have to, and that the deeper truth is the one he is going to honor. Things change fast in the tower, remember? Dad was right, I needed someone as smart as I am and he qualifies, and that's the problem.

Garrus alerted her Omni Tool with two simple words she could hear in his mocking drawl "No escape."

"I have to get to the Normandy."

"No, but nice try. I'll be there later. Wait until I can arrange an extraction that doesn't result in you being spectacularly detained by C-Sec."

She skulked back inside…

So…a few more hours in nerd paradise, solitude, silence and hopeful counting of minutes until the sound of the door means he's here and your heart leaps when you see that it's him. Just a few more hours of the way you would want things to be if you had a choice.

Then I go kill things for a living.

Yes, my life is really weird. It was definitely easier being dead.

She heard her parents not say anything…loudly.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

oOoOoOoOoOo

By the time Garrus arrived, it was late enough that she'd wrapped herself in a blanket and fallen asleep on the couch.

He did have to let her go, but not without saying goodbye. It was like her to slip out unseen, refuse to meet, not allow him on the Normandy, or only allow him near her in official capacity in public places. Because she…was tempted. She was so very tempted to take back every careful restriction she'd placed. He'd hoped for enough time to wear that reserve from her and get to the woman that watched him with hunger and longing…but she was typically Shepard…or whatever her name was…and she guarded that last bit of ground tenaciously.

He knew her well enough to know to wait. Two paces behind.

Unfortunately.

She wanted to be back on her ship where she made the rules and he could not follow. Yes, she was a Council Spectre and he could in theory tell her what to do, but he knew exactly how well she followed orders that countered her own guidance. He also really couldn't let her be observed leaving the tower without having ever officially arrived, the only conclusion being that she'd been there for a long time. He reluctantly arranged for shuttle service in a few hours, direct from the tower to the Normandy. She would likely only be stopped from leaving once at his request. She would manage to hack her way out or talk Anderson into using his tower access codes, and he would not get his goodbye. Then he had to get back to his life, more at stake and less to look forward to until her next visit, which was…out of his control. When it happened or if it happened.

So much was suddenly out of his control. He found it more and more difficult to accept that he really was going to say goodbye and throw her back into the storm, possibly not see her again, to be left with a memory of her kiss and vengeance against whatever killed her. In theory he'd be able to do more than hold her…once the war was over. The war that historically took centuries, eradicating all life.

But you got your kiss, and your bond, and she has spent nights in your arms because she did not want to leave. She's wrapped in a blanket on the couch where you've spent so much time together. She's not in her bed. She's waiting here, sleeping and trusting because she does not at heart want to leave. She has to leave in Spirit. She loves you and is terrified…for good reason…of everything that could go wrong, mapping out her life…and now yours…as she always did, careful and considered moves.

So there's that.

He had to remind himself often and viciously to not complain. He did not always succeed.

He was doing his job, but political capital was disappearing or being devoured by distraction. Shepard's reappearance was virtually simultaneous to his bond. Add in his dramatic lack of a social life for two years and the unexplained marks on his crest…

He felt and saw the shift in political potential daily. Shepard had not been produced publically, but she would be. Ambitions that might have involved an alliance with Vakarian clan through bond faded, in some places bitterly. In some places vengefully. Everyone knew that Shepard would eventually appear before the Council. She would have suggestions and directions and he would always be aligned with them.

It did not matter if people could or could not verify that he was bonded to Shepard. What did matter is that they could predict his behavior and needs, and that made him vulnerable. He, Anderson and the Asari Councilor Tevos made for an impressive influence bloc, but the Salarian Councilor Valern would press and use the media to exploit vulnerabilities, find the places where Garrus was weak and would concede, just as he had on the long-wrangled and now supported project that had been traded for Shepard's Spectre status. There were Hierarchy opponents who wanted their projects highlighted and would do the same thing. All they needed to do was oppose what Shepard needed and he would have to concede in other places. Garrus's insistence on Reaper readiness was fortunately unchanged, her return marked no alteration in his approach, but now Shepard was the focus and he was potentially diminished to a puppet of bond and inclination.

That should bother him more, but his main problem was not that he was a puppet, it was that he could not announce how proud he was to be HER puppet.

Where Garrus had before been inexorably insistent in his political life, now there was a personal element. His announcement had convinced some that he was romantic and prudent. His already high approval rating with the public of all species in general got a bump, but it had taken a distinct Turian dip. Not critical, but enough to validate every fear Cara had about loss of political capital and Turian support. Discovering his bond mate's identity would be at the top of any influence peddler's list, but any competent influence peddler would be able to draw a map without proof.

The wiser political players only had to act as though his being bonded to Shepard were true, and watch how that bet paid off every time predictably. It could and would erode his appearance of representing only the Hierarchy if it could be easily deduced that he owed his fealty as bond mate to Shepard. She must support the furthering of the survival of all species, not just humans. He had to support the furthering of the survival of Turians in order to protect her, and he could not protect her as zealously as he would wish. Not publically. He could not be caught doing it privately either. It would ruin his bargaining position and authority. He could potentially be provoked, needled and harassed on the subject and he must at all times remain calm, as Councilor Vakarian had always been. As he, looking down at her sleeping at the moment was not inclined to be. He had to be even more careful to create distance, rely on Anderson and Tevos to support her. He had to hang back and that was painful. Hang back on the Citadel when he wanted to be next to her. Hang back politically and hedge his position strategically. He was not at imminent risk of losing his position, but he had to concede that his position would face new scrutiny, new assumptions and he was limited in his ability to maintain Turian confidence and simultaneously support Shepard's…admittedly often crazy and extreme by nature to outside scrutiny…position.

His mother had quelled potential Vakarian outrage and supported his reasoning for private bond. He had not told her about Shepard, but his mother had wished him joy. No doubt his father and mother had guessed and were as willing as Garrus was himself to avoid exposure, only for different motivations. His father was no doubt livid. He had been distinct in his absence. Garrus's mother loved him and wanted to support him and that was enough reason for her. Solana was hurt at being excluded, but supportive. Although the greater population of the Citadel approved of Councilor Vakarian's announcement of concealed bond as romantic, Turians were not likely to believe that he was bonded to a Turian female for several reasons. A Turian female would need the status boost of being bond mate to the Councilor for her clan much more than her own life. A Turian female would have too much pride to allow her bond mate to presume to protect her in such a seemingly cowardly way. It was un-Turian in character to insist on secrecy, and could be construed as a backhanded insult to C-Sec in the more brazen Turian custom of eternal 'bring it on' up-front challenge rather than reticence. Fortunately Garrus had chosen the new Executor, and she had wished him well. His relationship was good with C-Sec, no backlash there. They had chosen to overlook the potential insult, instead honoring the face value of protecting a loved one, which was understood more viscerally by other species making up C-Sec, no longer fully Turian. The addition of indoctrination was a real, insidious threat, making the 'cowardly' aspect dim in comparison to other historical circumstances. His announcement had been hedging and careful and hoped to create a social fiction that would be privately disbelieved but publically supported due to very real threat.

Though Turians might not believe his social fiction, they would not insist that the Citadel had a perfect handle on all security risks. From mercs to indoctrination to run of the mill crime, claiming Turian exceptionalism and assumed immunity to danger would be a foolish public stance and would alienate other races who were more open about potential weaknesses. It could backfire and give other species a forum to question Turian commitment to security if they focused on denial of threat rather than prevention.

Whether or not he commented on his bond, others would and did. The media did. Gossip at his level of politics was business. According to Liara, Cara had insisted on not getting involved for that reason in her first conversation after resurrection. Hell, Cara could read about his devotion on a daily basis and keep herself very busy. She had two years of his addresses and speeches enshrining her memory to catch up on that everyone else knew about already. She was likely entirely up to speed on the fact that Councilor Vakarian was known to have held her in unusually…likely unnaturally…high regard. There was no concealing that.

The odd marks on his forehead he had never discussed had shown up immediately after Shepard's death. Those marks remained, and that was something a Turian woman would be unlikely to allow or forgive. Speculation had always described the marks as an odd tribute to Shepard's memory. A Turian woman would not tolerate her bond mate pressing his crest to hers with the rumored color of a human female painted there. Impossible. Yes, Councilor Vakarian was progressive and…unique in his outlook and based on his results cultural concessions were made…Commander Shepard was an admirable, exceptional woman…but it would be unthinkable. These were things Turians knew.

Humans or Asari might think: "But he could decide to keep them."

Every Turian's response: "She would be his Avah, it would be up to her."

"But if she loved him…"

"It is not about love, that is proven with a bond. It is about obedience and appearance. She would know he would obey her and that erasing three marks that were not 'important' enough to explain would be her duty to provide to his newly pledged clan. He would take her colors and her name. The marks are for clan, not for the bond pair. She would not allow clan markings to be alloyed with the unknown. Loyalty must be clear or it does not exist."

Cue human and Asari belief of romance and protection, and Turian assertion of understanding exactly what was going on. A bond, but no name change, no color change, no identification…

Loyalty was in fact clear to those who knew where and how to look.

Then there were those odd things in his office nobody could ever get him to explain. A stuffed animal such as those favored by human children, a reused bottle filled with unknown amber liquid, and an ancient Omni Tool. They had been enshrined after his return from Intai'sei in the office of Executor Vakarian and then transferred to Councilor Vakarian's new offices. Draw lines of most likely conclusion between the recklessly romantic gestures and their timing and they formed an arrow pointed directly at Shepard.

It had served him well even among Turians when she was dead, loyalty and dedication rewarded, hero worship admired as good character. Expectation was that any implied mourning period would pass and he would eventually choose a mate. He had no intentions of such, and though suspicion grew as time passed, nobody could prove it, nor was it anybody's right to do so if his Avah did not. His position afforded him autonomy and likely only his mother or the Primarch could bring any pressure to bear on the subject. Neither were inclined in that direction. He was still young and must of course choose with care. He was only in his 30s and often bond or children did not take place until careers were well established, usually not until a later age by decades. He had changed career five times, now in only his first year of being Councilor. His job was tumultuous and sensitive, it was understood that social concerns were secondary. Now, with the assumption that he was bonded to a living human, a human who had changed the course of history for many…opinions shifted toward the more calculated use of new information and his devotion was much less a fading memory than a growing certainty.

Fortunately he had not made a single promise to anybody regarding Vakarian alliance or influence, and his mother had abided by that as well. His father…had possibly been not as discreet…but he would have to pay that price himself due to his lack of ability to provide implied contracts or promises. His father was not a fool and would not make that Garrus's problem. Garrus's mother had kept her iron hold on Vakarian clan politics, proud of her son and responding to treatment for Corpalis Syndrome. Garrus's influence had gotten her into an experimental Salarian program. They had caught it early and although not all damage to her mind had been reversed, further damage had been prevented. He would owe Valern a life's worth of debt for that, and Valern collected in installments.

He was not going to tell Cara any of this, because she hated it when she was right about things like this. He also hated it when she was right about things like this.

He dropped all the things he hated after watching her sleep for a few more minutes, unwilling to lose the opportunity to spend time with her. He would have plenty of time to curse circumstances after she left. He picked her up gently and sat down with her in his lap, this position now familiar to both of them. She stirred only briefly and then curled herself closer to him, hand on his chest.

He let her sleep, minutes ticking away to the shuttle pickup point, passively protective now with her sleeping, present but submerged urges to lift her mouth to his, shift her tiny body against his. She was resilient, a survivor, and he didn't think he would crush her. It might force her to withdraw, lose the middle ground of trust, cause her to slip away like quicksilver. With her sleeping, he could contemplate delicacy and protection, his right to that and her unquestioning trust as she moved closer without his urging.

Once she opened her eyes…the outcome was unfortunately predictable. She'd see where she was, where she'd moved, and she'd look part guilty, part anguished and part hungry.

He enjoyed the hunger. He despised the guilt and anguish.

Time ticked by and he regretted every moment he had spent on regret, which was foolish and contradictory and just a measure of his growing desperation.

The minutes swept by until he had to wake her. He brushed a finger along her cheek and lifted her, partial protest from her in a sleepy rejection. He smiled and lifted her head to press his mouth to her hair "Time to wake up. Time to go. I couldn't let you go without saying goodbye."

She looked up at him, sleepy green eyes and a soft, sad curve to her lips "I didn't want to say goodbye at all."

He reached over to the side table and brought out a small package "I got you something."

She looked at it and said "What is it?"

"You mentioned brownies in your message…and I had no idea what they were, or what a brownie controversy would be, but…I did a little research. This is by popular opinion the best brownie that one can get on the Citadel."

Her smile was wide and tears flooded her eyes "You got me a brownie?"

He nodded solemnly "The best, researched brownie."

She looked at the package and said "Nobody's gotten me a brownie before."

"Go ahead and eat it, shuttle's coming soon. I'll take you to the Normandy, no security, no cameras, no questions."

She lifted a hand and stroked along his mandible, said a very quiet "Thank you" as warmth spread from her fingers along the plate and hide. He closed his eyes briefly and then opened to find her staring at the brownie.

She said with great ceremony "I'm keeping it."

He smiled and said "Aren't you supposed to eat it?" Had he missed some weird brownie custom, was that the controversy? 

She smiled, wistful, his heart squeezed tight "No. It's my first gift brownie. It's special. I'm keeping it forever. It will become an heirloom of my house."

He imagined the Madlis of Vakarian Clan on Palaven in Cipritine, the Spiritual home of the clan. It was a huge, ostentatious building with thousands of residents, recesses in the walls revealing armor and weapons and historical relics. His legacy. By contrast she did not even claim her own name, had no family and no home. I'd take your last name if you told me what it was, Cara. But you asked me not to ask you. Are you even aware of Turian bond custom? For now I guess it's just 'Garrus' to you.

He said teasing "You could have a plinth made."

She looked at it, appraising "What do you think, encased in crystal or just kept below subzero temperatures?"

He shrugged "Be safe. Both."

He had promised himself not to fall apart because he wanted her and could not have her, but fell apart the other way, that she wanted silently and had nothing, took nothing, saved everything she could. Not a bite of a brownie, not a kiss. Everything saved, whole for the future she had to create before she could take anything for herself. The boxes at Intai'sei made frozen and crystallized sense where they hadn't before. Even those were his now. Maybe they would be able to go there together some day, a sacred brownie added to the hoard, nobody to see as their bed warmed from their skin, silence broken with laughter and moans and whispers.

His subvocals vibrated in distress, and she didn't hear it, but she felt it. She put the brownie carefully down and wrapped her arms around him, trying to comfort him, protect him. She said softly "I love my brownie, Garrus."

He nuzzled her hair with his crest and tried to control himself, but said before he could stop "I want more time."

"Me too. We'll get it. Just…later."

He lifted her chin with his fingertip and said "I hate later."

She smiled, promise and hope. His heart squeezed again "No you don't, it's going to be wonderful."

Looking at her face, listening to her voice, imagining what it would be like to finally touch her, he had to concede. "I'm going to hold you to that."

She was up and out of his arms, blanket abandoned, gathering her things and secreting her heirloom brownie somewhere safe.

She made it to the door first, but before she could open it he stepped behind her and held it closed. She tugged once and then subsided. She stood still, stiff, not protesting but in her customary ready-to-bolt stance.

He leaned down so his mouth was close to her ear, hearing her heart start to pound. He said warmly "It's all right, Cara, I'm not going to kiss you. No Reverie, I promise. A little pressing, but I'm sure you can take it. I told you the negotiation wasn't over. It won't ever be over. I just want you to know that as your bond mate, I feel I need to protest that I did not get to send you off the way I would like. It feels…empty…to have you walk out…your skin untouched. There are moans from you I haven't heard yet."

She started to tremble, weak kneed and staring straight forward, though she didn't protest when he used the arm not blocking the door to pull her back more tightly to him. He lined up his mandible with the side of her jaw, his mouth close to her ear. He said "Cara, think of all the firsts. Not just the first time my talons trail over your skin, but the first time you trust me. I'll be thinking about what your voice sounds like when you say my name, your head back and your hair spread out over a pillow with my tongue finding all those firsts. I promise you will not even know you're begging for more."

In her inexperience and helplessness she said exactly the wrong thing to her mind, but exactly the right thing to his.

"Garrus…please…"

His hand tightened on her waist and he said "Spirits, yes, like that. Just…like that. You're going to say that…again and again…and I will treasure the thousandth time just like this one. It doesn't matter if you die, I'm still going to count those lost chances at firsts…I will bring you back again or find you in the afterlife, Cara, and I will take every one of them. I will count them up, they will be treasures of our finally-named house, and I will count them down again against your mouth, on your skin, in your body…until you know how much I hate…saying goodbye…to my bond mate for any length of time…and I just don't feel…right…that she leaves this room without everything I am in her blood, in her heart, in her mind. I belong to you. Now and always."

It occurred to him that absolutely no Turian in a room with them would fail to notice that her heart was out of control when he spoke to her. He desperately wanted to 'accidentally' make her heart pound, just like this, in mixed, elite company so there was absolutely no doubt he was hers.

She's going to avoid you…

She was going to do that anyway.

She's not afraid, she's fucking stubborn is what she is.

He waited in a hopeful suspended moment. Cara, turn around. Give me my first. Let me send the shuttle away. Stay with me.

She didn't move. Her pulse-pounded scent of desire that he had wanted to provoke did not go away, but it was shot through slowly with something else. A scent he remembered, something that brought him joy because that meant she was going to win, and if she was going to win, she was Shepard, and she would come back to him. She smelled like metal and desire. He smiled as he waited for her.

She said calmly "Garrus. You're mine?"

He answered in her ear "Always and forever."

"Then prove it and open the door for me."

He breathed in, appreciative and satisfied by his bond mate's strength and will, said softly "I love you. Yes ma'am." He opened the door and held it for her as she walked out.

She said, not looking back "I love you too, and I trust you, and those aren't firsts."

That was an infuriating thing to say, unless the word trust really did mean something different to humans, like so many concepts that did not translate.

She'd better come back or he was going to kill her himself.

oOoOoOoOoOo

Cara was very proud of herself and slightly sickened by getting herself out of the tower without breaking…everything…

She didn't want to be Shepard with him but she hadn't seen a choice. Turn in his arms and find those…firsts…knowing you won't leave…or use the power you have over him to walk out, not looking back.

He escorted her in silence to the Normandy, piloting the shuttle himself, relaying her on board and accepting a brief tour from EDI.

He stopped in the Battery, his hand stroking along the armature of the Normandy's main cannons.

Oh, his hand.

He turned to her and said "Commander, I believe once you told me that if I ever wanted a bunk on any ship you commanded, all I ever had to do was ask. I'm asking."

She was on guard and stayed in the often constricting but now-comforting hard presence of Shepard, though the image of him on the ship in any bunk, in her bed, on the couch in her quarters…was exactly what he'd wanted to invoke and added a sliding warm havoc to her thoughts.

She smiled and said "And right after that I said you deserved your own command. Permission denied, Councilor, though the request is appreciated. Funny how things change in two years."

He looked around the battery appraisingly "That is a shame. Then permission to tour proposed upgrades?"

She nodded "Of course, Councilor."

She did not promise to be the one giving the tour and she and he both imagined her hiding in her quarters.

He smiled at her "Some things do not change with passing years. Some things will not change."

She purposely misunderstood "But the gun will. Thank you for your technical assistance in the upgrades of the Normandy, she is magnificent. If you will excuse me, I need to alert crew as early as possible that we will be leaving soon."

"How soon?"

"Two days. EDI, if you would please assist Councilor Vakarian?"

"Of course, Commander."

She turned and left him there, headed for the elevator.

Once in her quarters she walked to the bed and fell face forward into it, really missing the tension relief of being able to swear. Instead she made indistinct noises and whimpers into the cool covers.

"Oh. Oh. That hurt. Hello blanket. Hello again. Yes, it's me. I am in trouble. You'll get used to it. What kind of trouble? Shooting at me kind? No…just…boy trouble."

She started to laugh and kept at it until her sides hurt and she was coughing.

"Oh. Oh no."

oOoOoOoOoOo

Garrus finished his tour, actively counting the moments where she was gone, knowing the sum total of potential firsts, seconds and twentieths would haunt him, but for now there was the warm boost of ego he got from watching Commander Shepard retreat because that was her only tactical option.

He was still not necessarily a nice person.


	11. Chapter 11

Russ got the alert that they were leaving in two days, vague resentment brewing strong in his gut and bleeding off slow in his throat.

Too many hinky things were wedging themselves under his plates and twisting. The Normandy was beautiful and sleek and he wanted her himself, but the source…Cerberus made him ill. He couldn't shake that Shepard was the fruit of the poisoned tree, and the ship a trap. He could do a lot about the ship, and had…

But Shepard herself?

So much riding on this fragile, soft-spoken woman. She was not anything he expected. He'd gone with Liara, heard Liara's stories and had been inclined to believe them. He'd heard Garrus's stories and had been inclined to believe them, though he was always distracted by Garrus.

Distracted. Sure, Russ, let's use that word.

Russ had met Garrus during mandatory military service, years before Garrus was in C-Sec, long before Garrus was on the SR-1. Russ was newly arrived, 15 years old. Garrus was older than Russ by five years and a Vakarian. Intimidating to Russ's small-clan sensibilities. He rarely looked at Garrus's face, never in the eye. Russ's size had always been a benefit, his speed and his intelligence the pride of his smaller and much more obscure clan, Yiansoc. Newly at training, all that accustomed status was gone. Without any status among his peers and from the most obscure clan, he was quiet and nervous. Russ's parents had great hopes for him and he'd had no idea how much ambition until he was in military service, far from home and far from their influence.

So when Garrus Vakarian met Hemorus Yiansoc, Russ had been at the worst point of his idealistic, sorry, pain-filled life.

Russ was a biotic and did not know it, because his parents had him implanted in childhood with an illegal, difficult to detect biotic inhibitor. Turned out this was a common surgical procedure with potential biotic Turian children. Ambitious parents resorted to risky and illegal surgery. Unfortunately and infuriatingly the practice still continued. Garrus did what he could from the Citadel to educate and prosecute, but it was a cultural blind spot. Since it sometimes worked, it was considered best for the child. Sometimes it made the problem and potential go away. They used Asari dampening technology of the sort developed by slavers. Dampen a biotic child long enough and some of them lost the capacity to use the ability, many never knowing they had it at all.

How do you prove or find a negative? Only from the failed cases.

Russ was a failed case. He had a history of ever-worse headaches that resulted from the hidden implant. He just didn't know that at the time. According to his doctors and his parents, there was no treatment, only suffering and silence. That's what he was taught, and that's all he knew. Turians fought hurt. Turians sacrificed. He was a Turian.

If he were entirely honest with himself, it's still what he knew.

He'd learned to deny all pain. He'd learned to accept the judgment of his elders and the authorities. He took pride in his endurance.

Add to the self-immolating package that he was gay and in denial because that's another thing a good Turian heir did. He was the only child of his parents, they impressed upon him constantly that the sacrifices they'd made for his welfare were to be paid back with a high interest rate in the future to his clan. Although he had status in his clan, he did not have friends. Shy around boys, confused around girls, relying on the guidance of his parents, who had him scheduled every minute of every day. That was another thing he'd learned later. Parents who performed this atrocity on their kids were advised to drive their kids to exhaustion often for their own good. Given that a biotic's metabolism required a great deal of energy, the theory was that biotics would not be able to express themselves in a child that was kept tired and undernourished.

So when he'd entered military training, the implant that he did not know about was mechanically and traumatically breaking down, the biofilm coating was ruptured and the internal capsule eroding, direct eezo exposure and other components causing a slow but increasingly virulent systemic reactive allergy to develop along with resurgent and uncontrollable biotic flares. For the first time in his life his diet was not restricted and he was eating now for two…him and his fucked up anti-biotic implant. The headaches that had built for years were now constant and intense, but he'd never missed a damned day of training. Proud of it. He was resented by his fellow recruits because of his ease of proficiency and lack of any social skills. Female recruits pursued him but he was not only not interested but terrified of what they would represent in his life, arbitrary power over him. Any free time he had was spent in a bunk trying not to throw up.

And now…horror…as sheets of blue formed on his skin and he'd wake to see them vaporize and hope they were just a dream, growing fear that it was a sustained nightmare.

He'd progressed in a few brief weeks from trying not to die during training to hoping he would, blearily keeping his balance and gritted focus on not falling over.

Garrus Vakarian noticed and would not accept his customary denial and explanation of chronic intractable headaches about which nothing could be done.

Garrus was his arms instructor, Russ trying to stumble his way through training, his ambitions slowly degrading from excelling to just getting the fuck through a day somehow minute by minute. Russ was high in the rankings because he would heroically focus while testing, even though he was ashamed because he knew he could do better. He heard his fathers's voice in his head often saying 'Heroes don't blame the pain, they overcome it.' He let himself drift, he told himself he could for just a few moments, because he was proficient at this particular weapon and instruction on something he'd pass without doubt could not compete with an increasingly stabbing headache, now affecting his vision. Normally he'd try to do what he could to ease the pain, but letting himself drift this time did not result in a relaxed stupor or ease his headache at all. He was watching the last desperate hope that it would ever ease slip away, facing timeless suffering where a night in a bunk seemed eternal damnation and a curse from whatever Spirits he had failed.

Garrus must have tried to get his attention but Russ was drifting to the left in his alcove, about to fall, and Garrus grabbed his arm to keep him standing.

Disoriented and startled, Russ had tried to pull away and some horrifying self defense feat of rage at being touched knocked Garrus Vakarian off his feet and far away in a blue maelstrom.

Russ's first thought was 'just fucking kill me.' He couldn't see straight, but he did know he was an abomination and he'd just assaulted his instructor. Worst case scenario, which seemed to be his life up to this point, he should be beaten to death, his body dragged somewhere as a lesson to others.

Please.

Instead Garrus moved slowly to a sitting position and spoke quietly from the ground "It's Yiansoc, right? Russ?"

Sounded like a trap. Don't answer. Whatever you say, he'll use it against you. Russ didn't move and thought again 'just fucking kill me.'

Quickly. Please.

Don't beg.

Garrus waved everyone else away, waited while the fascinated filed out, leaving Russ and Garrus alone on the range.

Garrus said quietly "Russ. I need to get you to a doctor."

Russ shook his head and the pain scattered and resettled in brighter shards "Doctors can't fucking help me."

Garrus said quietly "Not the ones you've met, that I'm sure. Someone new. Russ, your pupils are blown. Something is wrong."

That sounded to be about the funniest thing Russ had ever heard, 'something' being wrong when the word was 'everything' but laughing hurt. He laughed anyway, slid to the floor because if he was going to die, doing it from there would be better. From there it got hazy, Garrus's voice calm, with Russ not remembering if he had only thought about begging Vakarian to make sure he never woke up, or if he'd actually said it. Then it went mercifully dark.

Garrus was there when he woke up, calmly telling him about the eroded dampener. Garrus had gotten an Asari specialist surgeon who was able to locate the thing. Russ was shocked into silence on several fronts. First, he was being treated like a Turian and not an abomination by a Vakarian. Second, he had to absorb that he'd always been biotic, would always be a biotic, and apparently powerfully so. According to the Asari's description, the dampener had been illegal, barbaric and intended to last for two years. Based on the model and wear she thought Russ had it in for at least thirteen years.

Russ heard the implication in Garrus's calm and careful voice. His parents had done this, had put it in, hadn't sought removal when the pain had consistently overwhelmed him. Maybe they were unable to secure a new one, maybe they were just ignorant, but they had done this. Maybe the doctors knew, maybe they were bribed to shut up, maybe they never found it. But he did know his parents prevented anybody from taking that…thing…out of him.

Russ reviewed his life, moments of his parents looking at each other, looking at doctors, determination and denial in retrospect blatant on their faces and in their voices. He was certain. He was suddenly and coldly absolutely certain that his parents would rather he die or be in constant pain than be discovered to be a biotic.

Garrus assured him recovery would be slow but steady. He then asked Russ a question not a single person in his life had asked him before: "What do you want to do?"

Russ was silent for long minutes, a wash of blue over his skin and over his eyes. He stared at the wall opposite Garrus, and saw a label on a box on the shelf labeled "Orbestan Medical Supply" and decided that was his new name.

"I want my parents told I'm dead. I want a new name. I want this paint off my face."

Garrus did all of that for him without question, visited every day for the months of rehab, and arranged for him to transfer with a new identity to Cabal training.

Over time Russ was able to walk without assistance, freed of crushing headaches, starting to be able to control biotics and trying to shake off the habits of denial and pain with a more or less healthy and appropriate burn of rage toward his parents tempered by a well of gratitude toward Garrus. He began to look forward to new opportunities, Garrus supportive and protective and encouraging. By the time he left for training, Russ was deeply in love with Garrus Vakarian, who as far as Russ could tell saw him only as an unfortunate small-clan of unusual size for his age.

Russ moved forward in his life, found lovers but never one who could compete with the impossible standard of a young boy's crush on a man who was the first to show him kindness. Garrus had shown understanding of something inside Russ, something the people who supposedly loved him put inside. Garrus had the experience and faith to find it and to forgive Russ for knocking him on his ass. Russ's internal image of an invincible Turian warrior as the most noble goal was replaced by the image of a man sitting in the dirt, calmly convincing a young and desperate boy that he shouldn't have to be in pain and that help was possible. Garrus was still the only person who had ever asked him what he wanted. Sure, people asked later, but usually in trade once Russ had something to give back. Garrus had saved his life and then listened to a young abomination deny his duty to clan. One more place where Russ was out of control, rageful and probably deserving to be beaten to death, genuinely uncaring if that happened, but Garrus hadn't argued. He hadn't asked for anything in return. He'd followed up. Cared.

Russ now had a rare talent at a steep price, biotics that had resisted and rebounded off dampening technology. Nobody could be sure how the dampeners affected biotics because there were no studies, obviously, but his were strong and versatile. Could be they started out that way, could be that the interaction with the dampener resulted in alteration. He liked the Cabal recruits. It took some time, but he stopped thinking of them as abominations, started thinking of them and himself as people. He developed new biotic skills and helped others do the same.

Nobody cared if he was gay because the bar of respectability had been so far exceeded by biotics and bare face that 'fuck it' was the general attitude. Kids already facing a life of marginalized service and social denial admired his unashamedly bare face. He tried to emulate Garrus's manner, became easygoing and funny, excelled at training, became an instructor himself. There he stayed until Garrus tapped him to help integrate Turian biotics into C-Sec ranks and training.

The fact that Garrus remembered him at all was a massive shock. Garrus had followed his career, sought him out, then worked with him closely and took his advice. Hero worship did not cover what Russ felt for Garrus, but it would do as a reliable cover. Russ did his damnedest to not impose his…not resurgent but certainly reliably…surgent…passion on Garrus, but to be of use and of service. Russ would have done anything for Garrus Vakarian, anything. Something that was a never-fading but somewhat guilty childhood crush gained real legitimacy, a genuine friendship and Russ having the right to call him a friend.

Watching Garrus cut through Citadel politics and prejudice, being proudly associated with a bare-face biotic had been heady enough, but being told he was trusted and competent, asked as a personal favor to accompany Liara T'Soni and help her…

Anything you need, Garrus.

He liked Liara. Russ was star struck by the company he was keeping. Yorlas and Ginavek had died when they saved Feron and recovered Shepard's body. Liara stated repeatedly that she owed him everything, but he felt it was the reverse. Russ found another kind, extraordinary person in Liara. Another person he would do anything for, sworn to secrecy because…because Liara knew and even Russ knew…Garrus Vakarian was in love with Commander Shepard. Russ had been right there, working with him, had seen the change, had mourned for the life that bled out of Executor Vakarian, less Garrus each day. Those marks on his crest might as well have been in human script saying "Property of Lal Shepard."

He had wished he could do something about it, but Russ would not bring up Commander Shepard's name in any context. He didn't believe she would actually be brought back to life. He wasn't deluded enough to think Garrus would find consolation in Russ's arms. It was a source of heated fantasy but he never brought that into Garrus's presence. Russ did develop a reputation for seeking out Vakarian lovers of a certain build. This turned out to be a common fad and fetish of many a male and female Turian during Garrus's rise to power, so Russ was only one among many. Vakarians were plentiful and not inclined to complain.

Russ listened to Garrus talk about her, believing her to be the pinnacle of human achievement and Turian admiration. He was there with Garrus every day after his return from helping Liara. She and Garrus had both kept Russ busy, and he made a name for himself in one spectacular raid on a slavery ring that worked out of the Citadel. Leading a team he'd rescued hundreds of Turians at Nimeres. Garrus had set it up and Liara had gotten the intel, but they both gave him full credit. Garrus sponsored him for Spectre after that mission, and through Garrus's uncanny persuasion that seemed to be supernatural but Russ easily believed that of him, he was accepted and trained.

Once again, Russ would do anything for Garrus Vakarian. So he was a Spectre and a close associate, protégé…friend…of the Turian Councilor, who was still less Garrus each day, until he spoke her name. That was the only time real light came into Garrus's eyes, humor lighting his voice. Russ considered Shepard to be more of a Spirit, and he enjoyed Garrus's storytelling, his voice…

Spirits, his voice.

He never got tired of hearing about Shepard. It was when Garrus was most alive. He wasn't jealous because she was a Spirit, she wasn't here, she didn't get to hear his voice herself. Russ was the one blessed.

So when it became probable that Shepard would be returned to life, with Liara planning to bring her to the Citadel, Russ had to decide what his reaction would be ahead of time.

He knew going in that Hemorus Orbestan would do anything for Garrus Vakarian, and Garrus Vakarian would do anything for Lal Shepard.

Therefore…by the transitive property…Hemorus Orbestan would be doing everything for Lal Shepard.

He hadn't spent years passing as a pain-free, non-biotic heterosexual without picking up some tricks, so he knew the best he could hope for would be to see life soak back into Garrus, and it would be worth it. He was Garrus's friend and no more.

But…by every Spirit who could hear him, he had not been able to predict how much it would hurt.

Garrus and Liara were larger than life and familiar…Lal Shepard was something else, and not something he particularly cared for after the first disorienting shock of meeting a woman who appeared helpless and occasionally shrewd.

He would admit some of it was straight up jealousy, because Garrus Vakarian would do…anything…for Lal Shepard…and she saw Garrus as a political asset first.

Through all the stories told about her, he'd had no idea if Lal Shepard loved Garrus Vakarian back…but it hadn't mattered when she was dead. Now she wasn't dead. Now she wasn't dead and Garrus put his mark on her, bonded to her without question, and she'd…failed to appreciate it.

That alone…Russ was not certain he could ever forgive her, or would ever stop feeling seething jealousy, holding her responsible for any slight Garrus experienced that she did not compensate for as his Avah.

He occasionally remembered that Garrus said he had bonded to her without her consent, but Russ could not imagine someone not being transcendently thrilled by that occurrence, or someone that would not find Garrus impossibly attractive, and it had no positive impact on his opinion of her. Russ decided that Garrus must be covering for her coldness, because Garrus was a kind man and would, in fact, do anything for her.

The irony of Garrus speaking as though there were to be no secrets in that room…while Garrus was clearly covering for Shepard, Liara always had some far away moments where she lost the Shepard as Goddess narrative, and Russ was one of the biggest offenders of the 'no secrets' rule, teasing where he wanted to protest that none of this…made sense…and how was it possible that Shepard first did not appreciate Garrus and second looked like she could barely carry a gun, much less shoot one.

She failed to impress.

She was fine, he was sure, smart and canny and that was great…but this was Shepard. She should be more. And this was Garrus telling her he wanted to give her his life and everything in it, and she apologized for it.

It all reeked of asterisk.

Not only that, but she was distant, cold and there was something so instinctively…off about her that he couldn't shake the bad vibe. Was she always like this or was it a side effect of being…well…dead and brought back to life by a racist organization?

So here he was, ironically living one of his more primal fears, bound to obey a woman he did not care for or trust. He'd earned his own Spectre status and tossed it aside without question because Garrus Vakarian had told him he was the best there was.

"I need you on that ship" was prefaced by that perfect man's voice saying "I need you" and that's all Russ had to hear.

So she spent days locked away, and Garrus was undercut politically because of her, smelled like helplessness and not her. Russ felt that resentment burn in his throat, bile and subharmonics. This woman had been given her life back, a ship, the devotion of the best Turian in existence, and she was silence. He did not understand her supposed allure or intended authority or how in any hell she was going to do a fucking thing that Garrus couldn't have gotten done on his own.

Say it Russ, at least be honest here…and gotten done with your help.

Fuck.

This was about something he hated, image. He had proven he didn't need a clan, could be who he was without compromising…

Except for the fact that you are in love with someone who you will never tell…

And she insisted on…exactly what she was supposed to in order to get the job done, no denying that, but at least…at least, you ridiculous woman…smell like your bond mate and do not lock him out of your life.

Garrus would be better off without her, he had been on the right track, he hadn't needed more than her memory. The real woman was going to fail, made of overblown reputation and overhyped 'life.' It was up to Russ to prop her up.

He was going to be coldly sacrificed at the altar of a small, fragile woman who somehow in her history managed to place one Councilor, take the bond of another and by all appearances appreciate neither.

He did not get it.

Things that he did not get tended to result in people dying.

His subharmonics built to a growl and he had to do something about that. He was going to be stuck on a ship with people he did not know, Spirits knew if there was going to be another Turian, Spirits only knew if he was going to live long, but he could not take this anger with him.

It wasn't for her, it was for Garrus.

He headed to a bar where his reputation and type was well known, where he would not be approached by a woman, and where nearly every Vakarian that frequented the place would know whether or not Russ approved of their build.

He was going to miss the Citadel. He was going to miss his ship and crew, though he didn't sleep around there. Fine for people of similar rank, not in his opinion fine for a Spectre. There was an inherent power imbalance that he was not willing to exploit or be perceived as exploiting. He was acutely aware of the power of hero worship, and now Russ was a hero himself. After Nimeres he'd gotten a clear view of that, people as grateful to him for saving a cousin or a sister as he had been about Garrus saving him. He was careful, respectful and cautious of other people's hearts. That said, he didn't mind at all being objectified as an eight foot tall bare-faced Spectre, benefitted from it personally. He'd learned very early in his career that he was not going to blend into the crowd. It had been a long time since anybody had told him they objected to his bare faced status. Instead of being a horrible stigma, turned out it was its own fetish and he enjoyed having his face touched as though it were sacred or profane.

He enjoyed a lot of things. Damned if he was going to miss the opportunity to enjoy them again before they left. He'd been working hard, hadn't been out since Shepard's return. He dropped his frustration and apprehension, focused on letting it all slide in the service of emotional equilibrium.

Acting skills were important.

Garrus and Shepard would have to work out their relationship and although it stung to watch them flounder, there was absolutely nothing he could, or should do about it.

Couldn't deny that he wanted to, though, always wanted to.

He'd barely gotten an ale in a habitual corner booth before Taris joined him silently, sitting down without being invited, and that was good. Taris Vakarian was a beautiful man, smart and sharp. Mentally and otherwise. Taris smiled, gestured to the ale and said "Drink up, we're leaving."

"Can I just bring it with me?"

Taris stood, took the ale and started to walk out, so that was good. Russ loved this place so much he rarely spent more than 10 minutes here.

Taris drank most of it but handed it over when they got in the skycar, and drove to his place while Russ took appreciative pulls, pacing the rest.

Taris asked facetiously "Where the hell have you been?"

It was a ritual because he had to respond "I'd tell you, but I'd have to kill you."

Taris shook his head "So full of shit. Probably something terribly boring."

Russ nodded in agreement and said wistfully "Rescue me from my day of sequential napping."

Taris brightened "Now that sounds like it has potential. Think I could get you for a whole day?"

Russ looked at him appraisingly "Of napping, probably. But I charge extra."

Taris rolled his eyes "You snore. I should get a discount."

"I'll give you half my ale."

"You're pretty when you're quiet."

"Spirits, so are you."

Taris's eyes sparkled at the opening "Did you know…that they now sell…voice emulation tailored to certain voices."

Russ grinned "Don't say it."

Taris shrugged and parked the car, led the way "You have a thing, I should have a thing. I could sound like a Councilor."

Russ shook his head "With my luck it'd be Valern. Your thing's just fine." Taris had absolutely no filter and no shame and Russ enjoyed that as well, affection and lust, though Taris had higher ambitions that he repeated but knew would not be reciprocated. It was good to feel wanted.

"I'm hurt, Russ, my thing's better than fine and you should show some respect."

"Show me the way."

"I'm going to ask you again, let's find a pair of female Turians into each other and all announce our bonding at once."

"I'm not bonding to you Taris."

"Yet."

"But thank you…for asking."

"I'll get it right some day."

Taris knew not to tear his clothes because…there were no spares here, he wouldn't keep any here and his clothes were expensive and outsized. Russ was allowed to do anything he wanted with Taris's clothes, so he did, talons out and shredding his shirt, leaning down to lick at his chest, but Taris stopped him, his hands in the way, carefully unsealing his shirt. Taris tsked and said "You need more zippers in your life, Russ."

Russ looked down at teasing fuss and said "Next time. You want zippers, I'll get you zippers, Taris."

"Get some zippers, keep some here."

"You're awfully good to me."

Taris smiled his 'I know' smile and carefully took off Russ's shirt with warm palms and scrapes of his talons. Taris said without humor "Someone should be, Russ."

Affection and lust and Vakarian markings, Taris not caring if he thought about Garrus at all, offering to speak like him because it just might make Russ happy. Fuck, it was a good day to be a Turian. Russ bent forward with a growl and bit along the hide of Taris's throat, both sets of hands going to pant fastenings and kicking them away, Russ's plates spread and cock out, gel-coated length of always-hard and glad of it taken into Taris's hands.

Spirits yes, hands were good but his tongue was better, Taris on his knees and Reverie from the contact simmering into his system and Taris's with mutual groans. Yeah, Russ had a thing, had a few things from years with biotics and biotic styles, hot and cold and constricting and electricity on the skin. Taris would want warm first, Russ's hands lighting up with gentle blue and roaming over Taris's face, the hide at the sides of his neck, the creases of his shoulders, talons digging in to scratch but not draw blood, not yet. For now there's warmth cascading in blue tendrils down Taris's back and chest, moans and Spirits, his tongue. Reverie made him anticipate hours of lust and affection, never being apart long enough to allow it to fade. He felt sorry for other species that could only last for a short time, preferring by inclination and experience the long burn of Reverie. He'd briefly considered just for curiosity's sake what Garrus and Shepard would do for sex and it seemed…unbearable. What the fuck was an orgasm and what if one of them were allergic? Maybe he was at heart a racist himself, he lightly considered that while spreading palms and biotics, nails and pressure into Taris's beautiful hide, looking down at the light blue that contrasted with his deeper Vakarian markings and the shimmer of purple in his bone-cast crest. He was fucking perfect.

He wasn't a racist, just fucking smug. He couldn't have Garrus, but at least he wasn't Garrus and didn't have to deal with an undead human female in bed.

He let the thoughts drift away, Taris's tongue endlessly talented as Reverie coursed through them both, swelled and crested to the slow warm overflowing peak. He waited until Taris decided what came next, because he had…so many ideas for later and wanted to savor them.

Next came a long time later, Taris turning him by the hip spurs to face the wall, one hand gliding along Russ's cock, tongue edging his ass, finger slipping inside and a long suspended groan of pleasure. Fuck yes, feather light wet caresses and teasing until his talons were digging into the wall, something Taris said he liked because he could see the marks later and they made him smile. So very accommodating, his Taris.

"Tare…please…"

This was also a ritual…please what…say it…a haze of anticipatory pleasure as Taris stood, dragging his teeth along Russ's spine, one hand still on his cock and the other hand scratching along the curve of Russ's thigh up to his waist, drawing blood. Taris stood up, still significantly shorter than Russ, everyone was, so he tugged Russ's hips back away from the wall, offered Russ a talon to lick, waited until he was finished and said "Please what…Ahr?"

Ahr. First letter of Russ, also pronounced slightly differently in archaic Palaveni "Mine."

Russ arched his back, blue warm flames starting at his shoulders and spreading down as Taris licked along the spreading heat, plate ridges and hide. "Please…Tare…fuck me before I decide I've had enough teasing and I'm going to hold you down and make you scream."

Taris shivered and pressed the head of his cock in a rubbing tease until Russ growled. Taris said "That sounds…terrible…please don't do that over and over."

Russ smiled at the completion of the ritual, the tight burning glide of Taris's cock spearing inside, more fucking perfect, Reverie speeding higher through his veins and biotics flaring over and around their bodies.

Taris groaned, teasing gone, trembling and talons drawing blood, but so far only Russ's blood, not offering his own, and he would pay for that. Later…now he was lost in the surge and pulse, hips pressed deep and held still, Taris murmuring fervently against the plate and hide of his back "I miss you when you're gone, Ahr, there is nobody like you…"

Russ was silent, still perfect but that small ringing hollow of the thought of Garrus, always and familiar, not unwelcome. He could say he missed Taris when he was gone and that was true…affection and lust got him far, got him perfect sex, and damned if that wasn't, but he said "Tare…you're still gonna pay."

Taris was panting, tongue and teeth and growl, saying "Spirits, yes, that's the best part. But I gotta tell you now because later I won't be able to form words."

Taris only had and only wanted control for a little while, withholding blood until Russ was provoked into a frenzy, stoked by Taris's talented hands. Scrapes of teeth and talons, trails of blood as Russ basked in building and ebbing pleasure, letting Taris wonder when…not if…

His mouth watered, anticipation and tensing preparation, power and flaunt, something people expected from an eight foot Turian, something he truly enjoyed providing. Now he needed blood and he could never tell if Taris even tried to fight it at all. It seemed like it sometimes but Taris had never been a hand to hand specialist. Likely he never got the chance even if he wanted to, and it ended the same, with Taris shoved back suddenly, the shock of separation, loss of warm heat, loss of balance, dazed and Reverie stunned. Russ turned him and lifted him like a doll, teeth digging deep into tough hide and muscle at the junction of the back of his neck. Combined blood on his tongue, frenzy and speed had him driven deep into Taris, a scream, his first, not his last.

Taris loved Russ's 'thing'…one of his things…biotics that made it hard for him to breathe, blue fire spanning his throat and an irresistible banded arm around his chest, gasping and begging for more. Here they would stay, sometimes for hours, the sounds he made and the banding throb around his cock, the smell of the man, the taste of his blood, whimpers and gasps and as promised, no words allowed.

And then Taris would lie panting and exhausted, Russ knowing when they'd both had enough, ideas and inspirations all played out on hide and plate.

Right then, when the grip of frenzy was relaxed, then he'd remember Garrus, the Vakarian body in his arms, a kiss to the back of the neck, a stroke along sensitive fringe, a gentle bite while still joined. They'd stay that way sleeping for a few hours, and before he drifted off he knew who he belonged to, the man who could call him Ahr and be right.

His last thought before he fell asleep. His first thought in the morning.

Garrus.

He'd tell Taris thank you, his Tare, soft and fervent, and fall asleep with his chest pressed to an imagined man, eyes closed and caresses along plate and hide that blurred from lust and affection into love and devotion.


	12. Chapter 12

First cruise was out to Omega, more of a pickup than anything else. Find Dr. Mordin Solus at his Clinic. She had Russ and Kaidan ready to go.

Kaidan had been thrilled to re-up with the Normandy at Anderson's recommendation, effusive and glad to see her, and that had been…really nice. She had a chance at a real smile and everything. He hugged her. That was nice too and just having someone familiar was…indescribable. Invaluable.

Omega was a terrible place and she had never been there before, but did loads of research on the way. The place was lawless, run by an Asari that had seized power years ago, mercenary groups and miners mostly, a hub for lawless trade, slavery…

Walking onto the station was worth your life it seemed. She had some things she needed to get for Dr. Chakwas and the new engineering staff…Kenneth and Gabby. Some couplings and some alcohol.

First few steps into the station they were "greeted" by being told to report to Aria. That was not unexpected, she'd go there first.

Thieves and Councilors required their due.

Don't think of Garrus while you're here.

Straight down the hallway was a man who was beating a Batarian. The Batarian wasn't fighting back. He was on the floor, and Lal's teeth clenched before she consciously relaxed. Cara faded and Shepard took the stage.

Deep breath.

Remember your lines.

Show time.

Omega was going to probably be like this the entire way through, abuse and chaos. She pulled her pistol and pointed it at the man. He looked human from here. She said quietly "Let him up."

She was ignored, so she said "First request is verbal. First warning is now. My next action will be to shoot you for noncompliance. Let. Him. Up."

The man finally turned to her and said "See you found me. Commander Shepard, right? I just have a little business to handle first." He indicated the Batarian, still on the floor, cowering, hands up to fend off blows.

She narrowed her eyes and kept her gun aimed at the human. "Zaeed Massani?" One of Cerberus's recommendations. Distinct face. Mercenary. She hadn't made a final decision about him before leaving the Normandy but as of now he was disqualified as a potential squad member.

He relaxed and said with swagger, physical and verbal, that made her more certain of her choice "Yeah. Heard you need me for your little mission."

Shepard smiled and spoke to the Batarian "You can go." 

Zaeed began to protest and shoved the Batarian back down when he tried to stand but Shepard clipped Zaeed on his right-sided arching shoulder guard carefully with her pistol. That 'guard' was a stupid bit of pretense intended to be intimidating. At best it would obstruct his peripheral vision. At close range his movement could be controlled by hooking some leverage through it. At worst a funneled shot through there at the right angle would blow out his throat spectacularly. It made her want to make a trick shot from the side to see if she was right. "Second warning is now. Next time you obstruct me I will shoot you somewhere that is painful." She aimed her pistol at his face.

Kaidan and Russ both had guns drawn at this point. Zaeed stared at her, cursed in frustration and then backed up a step. The Batarian scrambled away.

She informed Zaeed "We're just going to wait here a few minutes, Mr. Massani, until he has a bit of a head start."

Zaeed gritted out "What the fuck is wrong with you? That man is wanted for – "

"You mistake me for someone who would believe a word that came out of your mouth, Mr. Massani. We're going to wait here and then go our way and you will go yours."

Zaeed glared at her after he lost sight of the Batarian "I was told you NEEDED…"

She cut him off again "We've got a few minutes, so I'll explain. I am certain I do not need you. You had a prisoner you chose to not secure or restrain despite him being unarmed and you being armed and armored. If you saw Commander Shepard and hoped to do some grandstanding so she would be impressed by your brutality, that was likely just one more in a string of what I have to conclude has been a lifetime's worth of spectacular miscalculations of style over substance. For all I know you've been here kicking a man that's down for a long time for the fun of it. You kept your back turned in an open and high-traffic hallway where three heavily armed people could easily take anything they wanted from both of you. This is Omega, Mr. Massani. In the future you should be more concerned about your life and less concerned about your reputation. Maybe I am giving you too much credit and you just enjoy kicking, which is not a skill difficult to find and would only make you overpriced compared to the suitable substitutes I could pick up at a bar for the price of part of a bottle of whiskey. Even Cerberus doesn't deserve to be overcharged that much. Maybe that Batarian was a wanted criminal. Maybe someone had a grudge and enough money to pay you to remove him. All I know is he was helpless and you were abusive and this being Omega, I get to make my own law. Cerberus might still be hiring if they need an incompetent sadist with poor judgment. I am not. Take it up with them."

Zaeed stared murderous, icy double-toned eyes at her. She kept her smile and the pistol in place for a few more minutes. Nobody spoke.

She holstered her pistol and turned to go to Afterlife, Zaeed left behind standing fuming and silent.

Well, one down. That was easy.

Russ was fucking nervous and expected to be shot in the back. Of course it would be his fucking back, he made the biggest target and Shepard was in front of him, safe.

On a side note…Damn.

But if Shepard was not going to look back he'd be damned if he would. What was the point to that whole scene? They were going to be righting "wrongs" on fucking Omega? If the Batarian was on Omega at all odds were he was guilty of something. They'd never get off the damned station.

Was that someone Cerberus wanted her to work with? Was Massani the height of human competence? If he was that good should they insult him beyond what was necessary, piss him off and walk away after denying him a prize? You could have, should have just walked the fuck away, Shepard.

Russ put up a barrier because fuck that.

Shepard didn't seem to notice, but Russ was sure she did. Alenko shot him a sly smile. Alenko did not put up a barrier.

Aria was not all that helpful, Shepard having been summoned for the pleasure of being able to summon her. Lal figured that was the way of local assumed indignitaries and Robber Baronesses. They traded a few barbed pleasantries. Lal did find out where to get Serrice Ice Brandy and Dr. Solus, though she could have likely gotten that from anybody else with much less in the way of tiresome self-aggrandizement. She thanked Aria politely. She would not be fucking with Aria. She was not intrigued or impressed. She'd rendered unto the local Caesar and earned her way out and through, assuring she would not be interrupted by more lackeys because she had been prompt with her attendance.

On the way into the plague district, it was closed. The plague affected Batarians and…Turians.

She looked at Russ and said "We'll wait, go get your helmet." She could get some shopping done. She needed to find those couplings.

He shook his head and said "I'm fine."

She smiled. She turned around, walked back out of Omega to the Normandy airlock and said evenly "Spectre Orbestan, if you would please do me the honor, go get your fucking helmet."

Russ muttered his way to his quarters, grabbed his helmet and thought he was lucky she didn't shoot him.

So yeah. So…when she was soft spoken and smiling…bad things happened. Bad things that don't happen to Shepard. Check.

She didn't give him a verbal warning though.

She gave Zaeed a verbal warning.

Why didn't he get a verbal warning?

He vaguely wanted to tell himself that it was probably because he wasn't a mercenary piece of shit and should have known to follow an order, but he didn't like that answer.

This was a bit more like the Shepard he'd heard about, though. Thoughts of propping her up…seemed less likely. He still didn't like it, just in a different direction. A worse direction suddenly, cold and shadow looming as that thought eclipsed ideas of her being helpless. Now she was really bothering him, whatever bugged him about her gaining steam. It wasn't just today, it was her whole…thing.

He'd figure it out. It was not letting go anytime soon, all the hinky twist pointing toward something he did not like, and it wasn't that she was helpless anymore. Maybe it never had been.

While they were waiting, Lal decided to stand at the airlock where they had dropped him off, and she'd do the shopping afterward. Russ would have the chance to figure out that he'd delayed her twice, as though he weren't clever enough to find them on his own unless she waited for him and led him along. He had to figure out that he had to listen the first time. She worked on split-second tactical tolerances, she could not afford to lecture or explain. That just invited people to feel entitled to more lectures and explanations. People would die. Do it or you die, Russ. Do it or I die and so does Kaidan, because we have to be a team and I am the leader of that team. Do it…and maybe you die anyway. I can't explain to you how my brain works ahead of time, you just have to go with it. I am a faith-based initiative. This is a boot camp concept, but at a higher level and you have to jump when I say jump. I might ask you to jump into fire and you might hesitate, and I can't promise you I'm not asking you to jump into fire to survive. Just ask Ashley Williams.

C'mon Russ, if you're really the best there is, you get this. I'm just not sure you can believe it of me.

Kaidan asked with amusement "Is he going to have a bad day?"

Kaidan had been with her from the beginning of her Spectre career and had seen a lot of bad days. Some of them had been hers and some of them had been her imposing a bad day on other people. Her Shepard face cracked and she smiled at him "Depends on whether or not he figures out how to listen." She added sympathetically "It's got to be rough. He's used to giving the orders."

"So am I, ma'am. You gonna cut me any slack?"

"You, Alenko? Not you. Slackless all the way."

"You made it possible to learn the easy way or the hard way, but I did learn."

"If I recall correctly your moment of truth…"

"Please. Don't remind me. You died. So there."

"Got me there, Alenko."

"Worse ways to learn than fetching a helmet."

By the time Russ made it back, Alenko was smiling, almost laughing. Shepard's face was smooth and cold as smug, smiling glass. Russ had muttered his way back up to the airlock, wearing the helmet. She thanked him politely. He turned off his speaker and just kept on muttering where they couldn't hear him. Fine. He'd make the helmet officially a good idea.

She then went shopping, and a further sense of 'fuck you specifically, Shepard' permeated his muttering. Russ felt about fifteen years old at formation inspection with the seals on his boots undone. The humans were laughing at him and he was getting really fucking tired of her smile.

They headed back down into the sickened labyrinth of Omega, the air filled with the stench of burning bodies and fear. Now the helmet was a really good idea.

Russ saw where her smile ended, and where a lot of people died. There were merc groups in fortified positions and he did learn, fast, to take her advice on positioning.

Orders, Russ. They're orders.

And she was fucking good at it. He had to concede that. It still…was not making him feel better.

He expected her to tactically withdraw and come back later with a heavier team because this was no longer a walk through Omega and a pickup. It was a war zone and he would much rather have his team with him. He bit his tongue twice wanting to suggest it.

Would she shoot him just for saying it?

Seemed likely.

A quiet 'hold' from her during one particularly tense section of a fight made him really, really want to argue, watching two Krogan and a Vorcha with a flamethrower advance on Alenko who was backed down into cover at an angle that made it difficult for them to assist, with the enemy advancing behind a partition they could not penetrate.

Russ was not much for praying but could not do much else.

We're fucking dead. She's crazy and we're dead. At least Alenko is dead.

Then he saw that she took careful aim from cover once circumstances aligned and blew out the tanks on the pyro's back, leaving scattered Vorcha body parts on fire and the Krogan with their shields down, easy to finish after her quiet 'go' in a crater of shrapnel and spectacular gouts of flame. She'd waited until they were in range of each other, using Alenko as bait until she could take them all out with one shot of her tiny pistol in her tiny hands.

She cleared the area and asked casually "You all right there, Alenko?"

He shrugged "A little singed."

"Your hair's fine."

"Well, that's what's important."

They hadn't even managed to eat through his shields.

They reached Mordin and Russ thought he was going to develop a headache from technobabble. Shepard looked as delighted by his ongoing monologue as a varren with a…recently flaming part of an ex-Vorcha. It was an unfortunate image he had seen just before they had gotten here.

Suddenly, no air. They should evacuate. Now.

He couldn't help it, he said it. "We should evacuate."

She turned and looked at him, did not shoot him, did not smile. "And what happens then?"

It seemed obvious so he repeated a little louder "We evacuate them." He meant 'We evacuate the able bodied, but I can't say that in front of those who are not able bodied…' His tone implied for once that she was the one that was dense. It felt good.

Her expression did not change and she said quietly, urgently "Look around you, Spectre Orbestan. What are the odds that the few people in this district that are still able bodied will help those who are not when everyone is out of air soon? We try to evacuate now and the entire way out is filled with panicked civilians trying to avoid contact with everybody they see, because Vorchas and humans are suspected to be the carriers, Turians and Batarians are assumed to be sick. Suspicions are high as well as panic. They would be trying to avoid falling into piles of burning bodies, likely picking up the multitude of abandoned weapons and using them. Panicked evacuation is what the Collectors want to happen. It would be the best way to spread the plague after the requisite incubation period. It would result in a mob that would drive forward on panic and fear, obliterate quarantine checkpoints all at once and spill out into the rest of the station. This is a Collector plan, not a bright idea from a Vorcha with a chemistry set. We'd all die in the primed and pressured kill zone and more importantly, the cure would be lost. What happens when this…illegal shipping hub…with the perfect disastrous combination of transportation fluidity and panic lets people leave this unregulated station, dispersing the plague everywhere, particularly the Citadel and Palaven? What happens if surviving Turians and Batarians are convinced that it was a human plot?"

Mordin said "Shrewd analysis. Probability 84%. Excellent vector delivery plan following inherent racial suspicions and maximum fatality from low investment of effort."

Russ's jaw jutted and he definitely did not think of Garrus being ill, piled into a heap of burning Turian bodies like the ones they'd passed…for long. Even if that was all shit he hadn't thought about, she didn't know the answers any more than he did. That bullshit sounded convincing but it was a guess and she was bluffing. Mordin was a wonk hiding in here, couldn't get it done himself so he'd back her up so she would go his way. She was just a good fucking storyteller and that was one hop over from manipulative liar.

That's what you've done, isn't it? To everyone. Just lie on top of lie on top of lie…and Garrus is in love with an illusion, smoke and mirrors. That felt right. That felt really right and he finally had something solid on her. He knew it. His spine straightened to his full height and his voice filled with certainty. He was starting to get the hang of Shepard territory. He really wanted to say 'You realize only one of us hasn't died yet, right?' with contempt, but instead he informed her "This is a high casualty scenario." It sounded like what he wanted to say in tone - 'What are the odds, you fucking lunatic, that we get out of here alive at all?'

She turned and started to walk away toward the ventilation system, in theory not giving a damn if he followed or not. She was clearly done trying to convince him. Her way or out. She said "They all are by the time I get to them. Get used to it. It's up to us to make it as low casualty as possible. We go in now."

Fuck.

He was starting to think that when she said "Spectre Orbestan" she meant 'stupid and cowardly.' He also didn't want her calling him Russ. He did not want to be familiar. He put his head down, shut the fuck up, bit his tongue, and expected to die. He followed her out, which of course she knew he'd do. He wasn't tossing his reputation and career, he'd rather die.

He also was not going to explain that to Garrus. Ever.

He was a little resentful when he didn't die. Yeah, that was spiteful. That was his mood. He'd earned it. He was more than a little jealous when she seemed to be able to manage rocket launchers at range with no problem, more so when she directed him to use his biotics from angles, combinations and distances he hadn't considered. Russ was out of his element here, much more accustomed to overwhelming force and melee, now asked to keep his head down and chip away steadily instead of sledgehammering. He'd never wanted to sledgehammer more. Particularly a mouthy human. She directed him toward timing the detonation of available ordnance in the environment, degrading cover and setting traps and distractions, a third of the time not a living target at all.

It was…anti-Turian. He came straight up against his prejudices. Maybe he was racist. Maybe he really mistrusted women. He thought of women he trusted…but he told most of them what to do. All of them were reasonable. Okay, maybe Teryil wasn't exactly reasonable, but he'd take one of her over five Shepards. He thought of his team and decided he was not going to recommend any of them for this meat grinder. If they got out. He trusted Liara. No, it had nothing to do with women or trust or human. Yeah, he didn't work with many humans but he liked Anderson. He liked Alenko. It was just Shepard.

He'd felt pretty good about himself thinking that because he could overwhelm her like a child at close range, that meant he was superior in all categories. He had resented the implication that he had to protect her due to her fragility, and now when she was fucking scary he felt invalidated.

Was he really that guy? Might equals right?

He almost smiled at the thought of him being the champion of Turian aesthetics.

He eventually got to where he could not think about it because the fighting took all his concentration, busy countering all his instincts toward command and quietly taking her direction, which made no sense until it did. It all came too fast, just a constant stream of what the fuck are you up to and then…oh.

How the hell did she…think…that fast?

It seemed life with Shepard was about faith.

He really did not want to find religion at this point in his life. More manipulative lies.

Effective…manipulative lies.

He remembered it was for Garrus, buckled down, accepted that he was 15 again and got the job done.

It sucked.

Yeah, they won…

He'd start to maybe try to admire her, and then he'd see the image of a woman with her head down on a table, Garrus covering up his marks apologetically, and he'd be furious again with a layer of shame.

That moment had to have been an act. There's no way this cold-eyed bitch showed weakness without something to be gained. What she'd gained was Garrus overprotectively clucking over her, giving his life and being wrapped around her delicate, twisted finger.

She'd tried to protect Garrus when she thought Russ was going to ambush him and think it was funny…

No, she just wanted to get him alone. Councilor Vakarian, the prize. Alone.

I have GOT to get over this.

You've tried for years. You think a few dead Vorcha and a story about engineered plague and chain-reaction war is going to change that?

Shut the fuck up.

He had a headache the likes of which he had not seen in years, but was not going to the Med Bay to get anything for it. He just had to fucking deal.

oOoOoOoOoOo

Lal got back to the Normandy, excited to go speak to Dr. Solus, who let her ask lots of questions. She was thrilled to wind him up and watch him go. He was…like her…someone like her. Openly like her. She felt like the fraud she was, jealous of seeing him function the way she would love to.

She would have loved to spend her time puttering in a lab. She should have done that with her life.

She imagined big beautiful columns of data and emerging patterns like myths rising from molten lava or the sea, cresting glorious phoenixes and fluked tails of whales of discoveries, all hers…and tried not to sigh heavily. She'd love to spend all day here and had trouble tearing herself away. When even Mordin seemed to tire of talking, she retired semi-intellectually reluctantly, but physically grateful.

Back to the complicated grind.

She sat down beside her bed on the floor and pulled a corner of the blanket into her lap and spoke to them. The blanket had no gender.

"Well, Top…that's short for topographical entity…Spectre Hemorus Orbestan does not like me. I don't blame him. He's really good. I like him. Garrus was right and I'm lucky to have him and his biotics are…amazing…I think Kaidan's jealous…I think I'm jealous. Okay…I'll admit it, you're right. I am definitely jealous. I would love to play with them. His biotics. Don't be fresh. Can you imagine? Blue fire everywhere. They're beautiful. He's beautiful. He can take out whole groups. But he does not like me and…can I confide something in you? That makes me sad. It makes Shepard pretend to be angry, but it mostly makes me sad. I would really like it if he liked me…but I can't do anything about that. He wouldn't respect me. He's already about to pitch a mutiny and the only reason why he won't is because Garrus wouldn't like it."

She whispered "Thought he was going to kill me. I was trying not to look at that spot on his neck…you know that spot…with the nerve cluster…? Well, you're a blanket, you probably don't. That's where I'd have to aim. Nonlethal but game over. I had him put a helmet on too, so that would make that nerve cluster …well…yeah. I'd have been able to count on Kaidan, at least. He was ready. Russ is scary, Top. I shouldn't call him Russ anymore. Orbestan. Glad he's maybe on my side if I can manage…maybe I can't take him out with me often. That makes me sad too. I really…I really like him. I've read his record, you know. Yes, yes I have. I should have asked him but I didn't want to intrude. Okay…yeah. He intimidates me. I wouldn't dare ask him questions. Especially now. I should be following him. I should have insisted. Now it's too late. Advocate for biotic rights. Nobody knows why he's barefaced. I bet Garrus knows and I can't ask. I want to ask. I won't. He's saved…so many people. And guess what? He didn't die doing it. No, I'm not being modest, it's just true. No death is better than death."

"Russ is going to be like Wrex, isn't he? He needs an Alpha but he doesn't like the Alpha because he wants to be the Alpha but he can't, so we go around and around and around and in between we shoot things."

"Don't tell anybody, Top, but I miss Garrus so much I could cry. I think I'm going to and I apologize in advance if you're allergic to salt. I'll never know. Do you want another blanket for company? I should get one. How about a nice teal? Teal sounds friendly. Good company. Not too chatty, like me. Serene. Anyway…Garrus keeps sending me messages. I asked him not to so they won't be intercepted, but I think he really decides when I am his law and when he is his law. The further I am away, the less law I represent. His messages are breaking my heart and I can't answer. I'm stupid in love with him and he knows it. He wants me to come back soon. He wants me. He needs me and I'm out here letting potential Batarian criminals run away because…because I'm me. And now I need him…and I can't…"

Her shoulders fell and she did start to cry "So many bodies, Top. Bodies on fire. The smell…I never told you about the Thorian…I probably will, I talk a lot. I hope we can be friends. I really want a friend."

She pulled Top onto the floor, bunched up a pillow shape in her arms and tugged the rest of the length over her the best she could.

She missed her head in his lap, his voice drifting down to her, his hand in her hair. She didn't want to get in bed. It seemed…so lonely. Not the couch either, it would remind her of…

She reached down and hit play on his latest message.

"Cara. Please answer me. You are aware the Normandy has stealth technology and I don't know if you're alive or dead on any given day unless you tell me? I told you that you do not have to worry, I promise Councilors have good encryption."

She paused and looked at his face and traced the marks on his crest with a fingertip and said "Garrus, they do until they don't…don't you remember a big pile of stuff people thought was encrypted falling into your lap like it fell off a hacking truck?"

She hit play and closed her eyes for the best part "I miss you. I miss you every moment. You have to come back. You have to come back soon. Don't forget about me. Don't die. Don't be sad. Come home to me."

She was so glad he'd sent it and he should never do it again and she was terrified that fifteen want-to-be Shadow Brokers were watching the message and considering releasing it to Westerlund News. Or just waiting until they had a full pile of things like that and then using it against him. Oh, what if they were already doing that…Garrus would give in. She wouldn't know and it would be because she couldn't be his law…and he'd protect her and not himself.

Oh no.

"Well, now you know I'm alive today. I know you can probably turn on any channel and find that out…but I am hoping to make you feel guilty. Feel guilty, Cara. I'm thinking of you I want to hear your voice. I need…to hear your voice."

"Garrus. You have to stop. I love you. I am so…afraid."

It was kind of like talking to him. It was awful.

She cried herself to sleep.


	13. Chapter 13

Lal was making not so much progress in building a team. Track record so far one out of four. She had rejected several Cerberus candidates.

Orbestan had not offered any potential candidates. He was excellent on missions and he was not going to mutiny. That was really all that Commander Shepard could ask, and although it hurt, she left him alone. He did his job, she did hers. If they didn't exchanged bright glances, at least she no longer had to give him Shepard smiles.

Unfortunately their semi-promising introduction on her first overwhelmed and Reverie-soaked day back and Garrus's expectation of friendship with the man made her feel she'd failed in several ways. She hadn't managed to take care of Garrus's friend. Commander Shepard had failed to inspire. She had his service but not his approval. She hadn't been able to make a friend. She wanted to be friends, had even considered asking him to act friendly in front of Garrus, but was too mortified at the presumption to attempt that. She dreaded appearing in front of Garrus with Orbestan, them both at an awkward and professional distance. The last time Garrus had seen them together they'd been…

Garrus had been professing trust and no secrets. Because he didn't know her secrets. There had never been a scenario where you could deliver that. Let it go. Shepard doesn't really have friends. She only has goals.

You're not responsible for Garrus's assumptions or promises…

You just wish you could be.

She was anxious about seeing Garrus alone. His messages had begun to promise retribution for her continuing choice to not answer him. It had been three weeks since leaving the Citadel and she had no real reason to report to the Council. She was building a team and gathering intelligence. They had not sent her on a mission, only given her the resources to determine her own mission. So that's what she did. Garrus had ironically provided her with the power to not have to check in with him. Excellent for her mission and security. Not excellent in Garrus's opinion that she had found no way at any point in these weeks to find a mundane or heroic measure to prove she was alive…or that she missed him…or cared that he missed her.

She had thought he would know that she would care, that it was only security, but her betting on his sense of Turian duty to ensure he followed her dictates was not paying off, in fact it was putting her deeper in a hole. She believed that when he recorded a message to her now he was purposely holding his Omni Tool and looking down at it so when she saw the message it simulated the height and steep angle at which he'd tower over her if he were holding her in place, say, against a door. For instance. She thought about his kiss and the stomach flutters and near prickle of sweat under her skin was an excellent example of how thinking of Garrus was distracting.

His latest message was in his 'I am a reasonable person and you are not' voice, which was one part intimidation and one part seduction and altogether too effective at both "Cara. Beloved. Dearest. You are making me unnecessarily crazy. See, when I used to get crazy I'd shoot something, but now when I get crazy I get creative. Do you need a code? A courier? Smoke signals? What would make me less crazed and you more secure? You need to compromise. Find a way. Worry less about Reapers for an hour and use your talented problem solving skills. I refuse to believe that you can come back from the dead but cannot record a message. Speak to your bond mate. I love you. I'm not saying I'm going to kill you for this. Just that I want to. Sleep well."

As though she didn't spend hours worrying about Garrus in a day, alternately intimidated and seduced.

Was he getting read receipts? Did he know she played them over and over? Oh no.

She could not give in and answer. Regardless of his escalation, it would be a permanently tragic misstep. A precedent set. She could avoid missteps when she was at a distance, when she could think. She needed to use this time to think about what he suggested. She did not want creative Garrus. She had to be prepared to renegotiate and that's what he was telling her. She would have to give him something. She would have to find a way to speak to him or else he would continue this escalation to its disastrous conclusion. She just…couldn't tell him until she saw him and she did not know when she would see him and…

She had really only put the truest restriction on Reverie and sex…

She was not in the least worried that he was going to kiss her or force her in any way, that wasn't the problem. The problem was heroic, creative Garrus convincing her to take that first tiny step in his direction that would lead directly to her…kissing him…and then gravity and Reverie and every yes she'd saved up in a flood beginning with those butterflies, building with his voice and falling, falling, and lovely things happen and then you are Mrs. House Arrest Vakarian.

No, that is not a good thing.

He knew that communication could be handled somehow, possibly just between their high-security Omni Tool links, but she did not…KNOW…that was true. She was just recently dead, but she did know she had busted Citadel security before that death. But he was right, if she was going to put unreasonable restrictions she needed to find unreasonable solutions.

Wouldn't it be lovely to hear his voice the last thing before she fell asleep? Not death threats?

Face it, even his voice making death threats is a beautiful thing. Voice carries no Reverie. Just lots and lots of butterflies. And ideas. Don't forget the man's ideas.

Forget the man's ideas for now.

Okay. Back to Shepard business.

Of the other proposed teammates, Jack was a nightmare of offenses and criminal history. Pass.

She'd been intrigued by Okeer, and she and Mordin had been excited about the science involved, but she'd ended up with a consolation prize of a baby in a bottle. She decided after the memory of the rejected Krogan sent to die in the pit that she did not want a monotone Krogan programmed by a madman. Mad…Krogan. Krogan-Mad-Krogan. Mix them up in any order it was the same conclusion. Pass. She dropped the tank off on Tuchanka as a courtesy, to Wrex, because she was not a suitable nanny. Those were the practical concerns, but the ethical concerns were that she would be taking a life programmed to hate and kill and potentially force them into slavery.

Yes, she had already decided she couldn't spend her life on science projects, but beyond that the Krogan in the tank was a person. They were adult sized but not adult minded. They had no choices yet. Perhaps Wrex could give them choices and education. They deserved a chance at life. She could not force them to choose death by default because they knew nothing else.

It was really nice seeing Wrex. Interesting life when being welcomed and then playfully hazed by a Krogan Clan leader is relatively relaxing.

They could not go after any Collector targets until Mordin was done with his countermeasure, and that was not yet.

She'd lost some ground on the baking front as well, but she'd gained allies.

Yes, she was…very strange, and she had an oven…of sorts…in her quarters. It was not…technically a fire hazard. An odd design, mass effect technology and modular, she could break it down and store it. Okay, she had a lot of extinguishers in case of a problem. She had a lot of baking components and recipes. Thankfully even traditionally fresh ingredients like eggs and milk could be reliably simulated in dried form. They final result wasn't the best, but it was better than most things the Normandy galley had to offer. It relaxed her. She had explained that to Top repeatedly. Top still didn't seem to get it and did not wish to be used as a potholder or trivet, but her combat gauntlets and a spare ablative plate worked in a pinch, so she was respectful of Top's wishes.

But she got caught. Sort of. Not tragically, but definitively.

It was Joker. And EDI.

They told her they'd seen her sneaking a batch into the fridge.

She wasn't really terrified, but she did blush.

Joker said "So the mystery of the SR-1 brownies is solved, unless this is a copycat crime?"

She smiled "No…I…confess. I like baked goods." She did not confess that she made them.

Joker teased "Turns out so do I. Do you know those…raspberry cookies with the powdered sugar?"

Lal said helpfully "Linzer tarts?"

"You're probably not supposed to know their name."

"But I do. Jig is up I suppose."

"Jig can stay down."

"I suddenly realize I don't know what a jig is or why it's up or what down is."

"Question for the ages."

"No, I'm going to look it up as soon as I leave." Don't carry on about your fascination with etymology. Stop there.

"You need any help with smuggling in cookies, I'll say they're from my aunt, I'll say she heard about the disappearing brownies from me, she wants to contribute to the war effort, and she likes lin…linz…"

"Linzer tarts."

"Those."

EDI contributed helpfully "I can arrange for a drop off spot in the cargo hold. I will label it…ballistics gel."

Cara couldn't help it. She laughed "Nice touch."

EDI said formally "Thank you."

Operation Tart Caper was a go.

That sounded vaguely dirty.

oOoOoOoOoOo

Lal chose to head to Illium, set in there and was so glad to see Liara. She brought Orbestan with her and Kaidan, because she was certain Liara would enjoy seeing them both, which turned out to be true. Liara got a giant Russ lifty spinny hug and a laugh and Lal was…alas…entirely and inappropriately jealous.

She checked in with Liara regarding a not terribly helpful dossier…

"Thane Krios

Quick-kill biotic specialist

Expert sniper

Thane Krios is a Drell trained from childhood as an elite assassin proficient in both long-range sniping kills and close infiltration. He has slowed his activities in recent years but is rumored to have a target on Illium."

Lal confessed "I got nothing else on the guy. I'm afraid my hacking skills come up short when there's nothing to be found."

Liara gave her a contact to pursue, confirmed that Thane was likely on Illium, most of what she could provide on him was composed of unconfirmed rumors. Nassana Dantius was the likely target of his presence.

Lal remembered Nassana. Quite a bit on Nassana Dantius in Garrus's pile of actionable info. That someone wanted her dead was not a surprise. That she deserved to die was not in question. She could not fault Sere Krios for his choice of target.

Liara said "Unfortunately there is not much else to know about him that I could find either."

Lal asked "Have you worked with many Drell?"

Liara smiled "Oh yes. I've been lucky. Feron…" She directed the comment to Orbestan, who said "If only you would let us recruit him." Such a nice voice when he was friendly.

Liara said with a laugh "Absolutely not, I'd be unable to function."

Lal asked about another dossier, an Asari Justicar named Samara. Lal could stay on Illium for a while, get these recruitment issues done, plan her next moves. Maybe she could ask Liara for some recommendations, but she'd see how these two went first. Before she left, Liara spoke privately to Lal "I'm sure you could use a break from the Normandy berthing. There's an apartment here, I'd like you to take it when you're in port. I'd love to be able to visit." Maybe she could ask for Liara's assistance in setting up encrypted communication and relay that to Garrus for her.

Lal imagined Liara and Kaidan and Orbestan meeting at a bar, drinking and telling stories and she was intimidated and jealous of the scene, but she said only a grateful "That sounds lovely, thank you."

Liara sent her the coordinates and access codes "Any time you're in port. Every time. Come stay. Please."

It wasn't a spinny hug, but Lal got a Liara hug on the way out, headed up to her contact, and then quickly on to Dantius Towers.

The fact that there was no information on Thane made him a potentially extraordinary asset. She desperately needed more heavy hitting ranged weapons specialists, and Thane appeared to qualify both for up close melee and ranged, a rare combination of skills.

Her ranged skill was…not the best. Orbestan blew her away in potential if not always in execution. She had mainly overload and a pistol, he had…his hands and his will. He rarely used a gun. His biotic cool downs were exceptional. She was only comparable with hands and will if it was a terminal she was facing and not a charging Krogan. Once someone made it into Orbestan's physical reach, instead of being helpless as many biotics would be, he was more lethal. He was…the best there was. The best she'd seen anyway, hand to hand. There was no question why he was a Spectre. He could kill her in moments. She no longer thought he might, fortunately, but she had seen charging Krogan turned to suddenly ex-Krogan. She thought Orbestan took particular relish in those kills, ranked them higher in value than those who never got close enough to see death in grey eyes.

She'd like to think her personal fascination with all things Drell was not influencing her hopes of Sere Krios as a candidate, but that was unlikely. Silvie had specialized in Drell spirituality and history, and Lal had spent hundreds of hours in her library, dreaming over pictures and stories of lost Rakhana. Silvie had her own stories she'd learned from Drell themselves and that had been so romantic to young Cara's mind.

She sighed, considered Liara's gift of a hopefully beautiful apartment later and maybe even…oh…a bubble bath. A bubble bath and quiet. Maybe a few candles. A book with absolutely no intellectual value but rich in sighs. Room service and takeout menus with new things on them. Asari things she hadn't tried.

It was a date. She promised herself.

I wish Garrus were here.

No you don't.

I really do.

Stop.

She hated going after Sere Krios physically instead of diplomatically. There was a high probability that Sere Krios would evade or try to kill them as perceived threats, possibly force them to kill or injure him in self defense. She could not get any more information on him and Liara's attempts to bait contracts had not resulted in him arranging a meeting. She could not get a psychological profile on him. Cerberus had years to research him and had produced only a 'dossier' with five scant, unhelpful lines. 'Bait' became improbable as a method. He would likely evade them if they attempted to detain him on the way in or out and the only place she could predict he would be was in proximity to Nassana. Even then he could opt for a sniper's rifle from an unreachable nest. Lal had run out of time and unless she used this intel to her best advantage at high risk, he'd be gone and she would have to abandon the resources and time spent so far trying to speak to him. Making her track record one out of five.

She needed a win. Badly. She was grateful to be doing something, in her own way. There had to be more competent people in the galaxy. They couldn't be this difficult to find. Every colony would be taken before she got the chance to help.

Moving through the towers was relatively easy. Orbestan and Alenko were now practiced and efficient, most setups obvious in how she would strategically arrange them. There were no major challenges and they required zero direction, comm channels quiet as they found their places according to the tactical protocols she had laid out and they had grasped, Kaidan with more practice but Orbestan with strict adherence to command structure and being brilliant in his own right. Boot camp was over. He no longer offered alternatives, belligerently or otherwise. He rarely spoke at all except to Kaidan, they seemed to like each other, both of them discussing biotic methods and stories and her listening avidly but quietly, attention turned to anything but them.

The biggest surprise was that there were Salarian survivors that seemed to have been protected along the way by Sere Krios.

Please let this be true. I need…a good person.

Nassana made it difficult to be polite to her, but that did not last for long. Thane Krios dropped through the ceiling and without their help killed four people in a few seconds.

As an audition it took about as much time for her to make up her mind as she had with Massani, her judgment as strong but in the opposite direction. She needed him.

She hadn't seen the phenomena in a while, so she blinked. Maybe her eyes were blurred from staring.

No, that was not it. Thane Krios was glowing.

Oh.

Then he appeared to be praying and she waited, unwilling to interrupt. She knew that place. She held it dear. Moments around the table at Sanctuary and moments speaking to the sky and to fate. Maybe he prayed to the gods of the Drell people. She nearly bowed her head in sympathetic response. Devotion in the still-bleeding-but-would-bleed-no-more radius of fate and death. The sweeping beginnings of a sacred circle drawn and the awaited and predicted completion of that gesture.

Thane lifted his eyes to intruders after his prayer. He was…surprised. He had predicted dying by now, mid prayer. They were at range, armed and armored. He had focused only on his purpose. Amonkira would guide him and Kalahira would take him. It would be a good death.

He was likely no more or no less educated about the people that faced him than most citizens of the galaxy. They were all recognizable. Spectre Lal Shepard. Spectre Hemorus Orbestan. Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko.

Orbestan and Alenko had guns drawn and the willingness to kill on their faces. To that Thane was accustomed.

Commander Shepard stood quietly, to all appearances respectful of his prayer. Something sacred in her eyes that blinked only once after his eyes met hers and then opened to some strands of the ineffable that harmonized with his prayer. Her weapon was holstered. He believed she was waiting for him to speak first.

One game ended and another game began immediately, his fingers reaching for the first piece to move. A new board spread out before him. There were rules to all games. Liberties. Restrictions. Purposes. Given enough moves he would grasp her purpose. Make a false move and the guarantee in Spectre Orbestan's eyes was that it would be his last. That was acceptable.

She was a woman woven into the fabric that created the state of the worlds, armies and policies and influence. She had been of more value dead than most while they lived, her memory held up as a template and a banner. She had placed the Councilor for her own race, having earned the right to create the position by saving the lives of the current Salarian and Asari Councilors. She was linked through history to the current Turian Councilor, who had served on her crew, as had Lieutenant Alenko. Spectre Orbestan was a close friend to the Turian Councilor. She was linked through persistent gossip to Vakarian romantically through secret bond.

By proxy, the Council stood in this room and he stood before them.

She seemed through the passage of prayer and power to fill the room.

Siha.

The word came to him not in a voice but as though written in the sand after a wave has withdrawn. Silence. He let the moment linger for its purity, then broke the silence to acknowledge her intent to be polite and his to reciprocate.

Her first move was to wait until he made his first move.

"Spectre Shepard. What is it you seek?"

It sounded like a riddle a wise woman spoke to a supplicant in the desert the way he said it, and she seemed to hear it the same way. Someone must turn poetry to prose or perhaps Orbestan and Alenko would not lower their weapons.

With a small gesture from her hand the weapons were down, Orbestan and Alenko did not lose their willingness to kill, it was only submerged. So something revealed by a wave, something swallowed. The power of the deep sea, assuring him he would not drown if he merely beheld the shore.

Her first and second moves had not been wasted. Most would have chosen attempted intimidation. She certainly had that at her disposal. He was beyond the reach of intimidation. There was nothing she could use to threaten him, nor was death a concern. It would be a mercy. He could not be tortured; he would end his own life if it were attempted, several methods available undetected on his body, none requiring the use of his hands. He could not be used against his will, for that would require him being at liberty to pursue methods others could not. Those who had tried had discovered his will and his methods did not bend in that manner. He made other things bend and break when pressed in order to discourage further attempts.

Fear was not her chosen weapon.

She said softly "We would have preferred a different introduction. This is dramatic and I apologize. Unfortunately there are many reasons why you would not wish to meet with a Spectre."

"Or two."

Her lips did not exactly smile, but did pull at the acknowledgment of the understatement. He was trained to avoid authority and he was now in the room with possibly the one person with the most authority over past and future events that determined life and death for all, flanked by enforcers with enough determination to bring that about. Thane had existed in shadows. These three represented the light.

Siha.

"We don't represent any threat to you personally, Sere Krios. Finding no other path to establishing trust or contact, we found you at the only time or place available to us. This is the only introduction we could arrange. We would like to speak with you."

More politeness. Was it tailored to him or was she this person? Questions and curiosity began to form, as though he had poured water and it had defied gravity, his expectant cup held empty and his eyes drawn up along the impossible trail of the mundane under unidentified extraordinary circumstances.

How?

Defiance. That is what Spectre Shepard was known for, and at the moment she defied what should be taking place. Two Council Spectres and an Alliance agent pursue a wanted criminal caught in witnessed multiple murder, a criminal whose bounties and information alone could bring a corrupted Spectre personal gain and any flavor of Spectre a name-making boost of fame.

Who would Shepard be without Saren?

Who would Orbestan be without Nimeres?

Perhaps Spectre Alenko would be linked to Krios.

Had she wanted that, however, she would not be speaking. Forewarned she would have any number of ways to subdue him without his consent, and would have prepared for that.

So he would consider that she was perhaps telling what people rarely told in his presence, the truth. Given enough moves it would be revealed for what it was because what could not be concealed through much of play was the end purpose of the game.

She had always opposed Reapers. It was not unreasonable that she still did and was not his enemy.

Regardless of the makings of Spectre Alenko, the name of Krios was unknown to most by design and making a case for his past, which did not exist, was unlikely to be their purpose if he was not yet dead or taken.

None of them would have difficulty functioning in the presence of dead bodies and arranging a later meeting point would not suit his curiosity or likely her purposes. He would not meet with a Spectre after having been permitted to evade her.

But a Siha…

A Siha he wished to meet.

Physically she was unimpressive. The skin of her face was leached of color, scattered with irregular faded rust-colored speckles. Her adornments were sweat, grit and the scent of heat sinks and ozone. Red hair in a military cut, short, lank with sweat. Other than her eyes, which were notable for color and intelligence, she was wholly nondescript. He could pass her on the street and his eyes would recognize no threat, allure or ambition. She was dwarfed by Orbestan, even by Alenko, thin and pale and without the customary artful cosmetics of most humans he'd encountered. She seemed not entirely adult, not entirely alive perhaps after her sojourn into death, her skin denying that red could flow under it. He imagined applying vivid color to lips and eyes and mouth, smoothing her complexion…and she would still be unremarkable.

Yet still a Siha. Not one of obvious and rich beauty, not like his Irikah.

But her eyes, her depth, her silent tide and her defiance…

"Sere Krios, we hope to oppose agents of the Reapers, the Collectors. They have been taking colonists of all species."

"They have taken colonies of the Drell."

"We would like to stop them from doing that. We would like you to help us."

"In what capacity?"

"We find them. We kill them."

He noticed one more thing. She said often 'we' and 'us' and not 'I', yet another distinction in her presentation. Not as narcissistic as he was accustomed, or aware of the usage and mindful. Not as narcissistic as he was himself.

Was it possible that absolute power did not in fact corrupt absolutely? He had not met an exception to that rule. He certainly was not one himself.

If so she would be…

Siha.

He had served the memory of Rakhana for the majority of his life, and with the minority of his life remaining if he could stop those who left Drell habitations echoing empty, he would.

"I find those terms acceptable. My arm is yours. Payment is unnecessary."


	14. Chapter 14

Lal took the…tentative…win of Sere Krios's recruitment, arranging to meet on the Normandy later, giving him time to manage any business or personal concerns he might have. She did not ask what they might be.

He'd continued to glow as they parted company and she wondered if she'd see him again. It was possible he'd only told her what she wanted to hear. That would result in a track record of one out of five, slightly worse because it was not her rejecting him, but him playing her and then abandoning the agreement. This incarnation of Shepard was turning out to be not so persuasive.

Shore leave was called. Adams, Kenneth and Gabby wanted to play with some of the components available on Illium. Gardner wanted to check out the markets. Lal needed to somehow find out if she could procure bulk raspberry jam for baking. Seedless would be best, but maybe she could only find something with seeds and she'd have to melt it and strain it. Dehydrated? Could she sift seeds from the powder? Maybe she couldn't find it at all and she had to find a raspberry alternative.

She'd been on Illium a few days now, and blessedly the place Liara arranged for her was beautiful, had a glorious view of Illium while still being private. Liara assured her the glass was secure. So that was fun. Outside dark, can't see inside. Inside glittering Illium. Outside dark, can't see inside. Inside glittering Illium. She'd run outside and then inside several times. Then she'd looked up all the ways to make different grades of transparent materials secure and still maintain its transparency. Fascinating stuff.

Liara came over on the second evening. Lal was working on the loads of data she could find on Asari Justicars. Shepard was a Spectre, but she had her own code. The Justicar code was not clear, but she could see from methods and results…that she could possibly use Samara on her squad, but may not be able to afford her in several ways in an ethical sense. She would have to wait and see.

Lal wanted to ask Liara about Orbestan's opinions of the mission and Shepard…but didn't. 'He doesn't like me' or 'Why doesn't he like me' was probably something Liara would sympathize with, but Lal felt like she was always on the edge of 'about to cry' on the subject and didn't want to push herself over. She was grateful their relationship was now professional and stable. She could accept no positive change on the basis of knowing how much more disastrous negative change would be. She'd limited her crying to Garrus and didn't want to branch out.

She wanted to enjoy her meal and relax and she had enough trouble with the communication issue, which she did bring up "So, I need to be able to talk to Garrus."

"You're not already?"

"I…assumed we'd communicate only when I was on the Citadel."

"You WHAT?"

"He's plotting my painful death, telling me about it in detail and then assuring me he loves me too much to do it."

Liara laughed and rushed to reassure her "I'll find something. You're worried about decryption or surveillance?"

Lal sighed "Both. Neither of you can guarantee that our messages won't be intercepted or that we're not under sophisticated surveillance. Garrus just…won't accept that."

"How do you know that if you're not talking?"

"He's talking to me. I'm not talking to him. He sends daily death threats and motivation. If you can help…I don't know everything about hacking anymore."

"I'll catch you up. There are ways. I'll get you set up. You're right. Not communicating is the only way to assure you are not giving anything away…but he's smart and he's careful. So am I. Let me raise your confidence level."

Lal looked at her and did not say that he wasn't smart enough, wasn't careful enough…but that's how she really felt. She said "He has been reckless. Romantic…and reckless. I've seen pictures of the inside of his office…there's his crest…and all anybody needs is one shred of confirmation."

Liara knew Garrus well enough at this point to agree that Lal had to talk to him. That she hadn't been talking to him was…oh Goddess "You haven't talked to him since…?"

Lal shook her head "Since I left the Citadel. No, two days before. Please don't yell at me. I didn't…ask for him to bond to me. I can't…dive straight into bond and truth and still be Shepard. I'm sorry that it's killing him, but I can't let it kill me."

"But it is."

"Yeah. It is."

"Don't you…want…to be bonded?"

Lal closed her eyes and imagined days and nights spent thinking about him even before she'd died, apple juice threats and how much that alone had made her terminally nervous. "What I am is guilty that he's bonded to someone he can't have. If he had chosen a lovely Turian lady…while I was gone…I'd feel awful…but it would be the right thing for him and I'd be happy for him…eventually. I'm…the wrong thing for him. And now he has no choice. And I feel awful. And I want to talk to him every day. And I shouldn't."

"I don't understand why he can't have you."

"Please don't take this the wrong way…but you not being able to read me like a user's manual is a little comforting. I know you can't possibly doubt how much I love him even if you didn't link after he'd kissed me. The only way that's changed is…there's more of it. If he knows who I am, Liara, who I really am, how much I love him, how much this hurts, how much I am… not… Shepard and therefore not destined to have to be Shepard, he would discover quickly that I could be Cara full time and he could share that with me. He would give me choices, and then when I didn't make those choices the way he wanted me to, he would make those choices for me. He would ask me to leave command. He would insist."

Liara had put her plate down, a hard thunk on the glass table that made Cara look, but then continue while Liara stared at her and didn't speak herself "I'm afraid he's going to accidentally on purpose make it known that he is bonded to me, then not fight back when Palaven calls for his removal. It's what he wants. It's what his bond is demanding, that he have me close, that he protect me. Then he'd move to the ship with me and I would not say no. I'm afraid I'm going to tell him every wish of my heart until he knows that the best thing for me is to take me away. I won't be able to stop him. I can't see where I can be…Cara…and Shepard at the same time. He doesn't even know my real last name. That he knows my real first name is too much for him to know. No sex because if I do that…that's everything. I'd give everything. And he'd take it. It would be wonderful, romantic, blissful…and then the galaxy loses Vakarian and Shepard…and not to sound egotistical here but I am expensive and a lot of people are counting on me. He is even…more valuable and a lot of people I can't help on my own are counting on him. Can you imagine what the galaxy would be like if he hadn't become the Councilor? If he doesn't continue in the position as it gets harder and harder? I can. It's grim. How do I choose my own happiness…and therefore his…up against that? I don't have any no if he has all the yes. I can't lie to him. I can choose a moment in time where I can give him everything, but his bond says now. I can't choose us. I can't choose now. I can't give him any less than everything. I won't. If I lied to him I wouldn't deserve him. He's given…everything. I can't do less. I won't. I've told him that…after the war…"

Liara was stiff and worried and said with a dawning tinge of horror "I should…tell you that…I was unaware of any of that. I didn't know you weren't talking to him…or why. He's on his way here."

"He's WHAT?"

Liara explained quickly "I talk to him often. I mentioned you were here, I asked if he could contribute anything from Council files about Thane Krios. If not that, then gossip, anything. He couldn't…and then he said he was coming for a visit. I thought it would be a lovely surprise. Romantic. Now I'm afraid I'm going to be accessory to murder. Possibly mine. I'm so sorry."

Lal sighed and tipped her head back on the couch "It's not your fault. Councilor Vakarian is resourceful. I'd ask you to change the codes and move me out of here, but it won't work. Sounds like an old movie." She said in a bad imitation of gravelly Garrus tones "'Illium isn't big enough for the two of us.' Showdown."

Liara smiled and said while trying not to laugh "I really am sorry."

"Yeah. You and me. Thank you for telling me. Don't worry, we'll manage. I'll manage. Somehow. When does he get here?"

Liara said helplessly "Three hours."

Cara laughed "Oh. Okay. No pressure. Is he planning on surprising me?"

Liara nodded "He'll come straight here, we have security covered…he isn't traveling as Councilor Vakarian and he'll use an assumed identity so there won't be a way to correlate that he's here at the same time as the Normandy. We're not stupid, I promise."

Lal thought of all the ways that they were stupid. Relatively. "Liara, I say this with love. You're both kinda stupid and what you want to be true and are insisting is true…can be made not true by someone with a little more imagination."

"Okay. I deserve that."

"And so does he."

"But he loves you so much…"

"And he's stupid. I'm talking relatively stupid here. Not extraordinarily stupid. Okay, I take that back. Stupid about the extraordinary. You are maybe thinking there's a 99.9% probability that nothing will be discovered. But I live in that 0.1% space. That 0.1% is worth a Councilor seat and all the influence that goes with it. I make those 0.1% things happen. That's why I'm so expensive. Unfortunately I can think of a lot of ways to track Councilor Vakarian through the data of his life's patterns without active surveillance on him personally. Change in pattern means change in behavior. All those patterns say a lot when you can't have eyes directly on a person. Correlation is all that's needed for his political opponents to gain blackmail material. So someone starts with a theory. If Vakarian is bonded to Shepard, he would like to meet with her as much as possible, and that meeting would be a jackpot of political options. A low value meeting would be me appearing before the Council. A…high…value…meeting would be his absence from the Citadel while his identity was obscured. He wants to keep something hidden, they threaten to reveal it. Definitely worth the extra analysis of an already over-observed personality. So they watch. Now let me make an educated guess. Councilor Vakarian is like clockwork. Always to work early but probably the same time every day. Very reliable. Loyal. Likely a bright spot in other people's days. Certainly an authority that is otherwise marked when absent. Someone others do not take for granted. Eats the same things, orders from the same places, tips high, meets the same people. Friendly, an obvious presence that is missed when absent. Talks to people in the office, knows everyone's name, that their child has a fever…cares. Am I right?"

Liara nodded numbly.

Lal said "But now there are changes in those patterns. Potential blackmailers know where I am because of berthing records here. Even if nobody knows exactly where I am at any particular moment of time, my location is pinned to the Normandy. Add to that Garrus's disrupted patterns, absent biometrics at predictable times, canceled appointments, video conferences instead of time on the tower…that guy on the second floor that he always waves to on his way by wondering where Councilor Vakarian is today…someone in a restaurant hopefully anticipating that he's going to ask for Galnis, his usual Thursday lunch. He will leave a Councilor Vakarian-sized hole in the data. That is more than enough to make an educated guess and a bet that takes no ante, only a potential payoff. "We know you were with Commander Shepard on such and so." That bet can be repeated indefinitely. They use those guesses…and he's too honest or too prone to want to get caught to deny it. He's relieved someone knows and the choice is out of his hands. He…of all people…should know better about secrets being kept on the Citadel. But you guys think there isn't another me out there who can decrypt what you work hard to keep hidden. The truth is they don't need another me. They just need someone or someones who are thorough. This is bond, Liara, and it's Garrus. Will and passion. That…leaves a mark. On my skin and in his life. And he wants the marks to stay. They're valued because they represent something to him, something he does not want to deny. You asked me if I wanted bond…you should ask Garrus if he wants it. I promise you that being under that bond means his answer has to be 'yes.' He is driven as much by that yes as I am by no. It takes away his choices as much as it takes away mine. I can't explain it to him, that would just help him along the way toward getting what he wants. The only thing I can do is delay him, ask him to accept delay, and I see how well that's working. I still have some choices. I am not sure he does. He is persuasive enough to convince himself that he's doing the right thing by joining me. He's motivated to make you feel secure in helping him and that love will find a way, because that's what his blood is telling him. You want us to be happy. And all our enemies need is one lucky day or one really sneaky inspiration. It might have already happened. It gets exponentially more likely to happen after days like today. It's okay and I'll figure it out. Of course you know I'm not angry. Thank you for the heads up. Please, at some point in the next three hours, contact him and let him know that I insisted that you find a way for us to communicate before I try to convince him of that after the fact. I won't have to act surprised that he's here. I will still BE surprised that he's here three hours from now."

"I thought you said you wouldn't lie to him."

"Like I can keep that promise. I mostly mean I won't lie to him about the nature of the inner workings of my soul. He's already forced me to Shepard him because he is Counciloring me…hard. Oh, that sounded wrong. Counterplotting his plots is going to be mandatory and unavoidable. Please get that way to communicate to us before he leaves…how long is he staying?"

Liara admitted "He didn't say."

"Of course he didn't. Hey, you know where to get raspberry jam?"

oOoOoOoOoOo

Liara left shortly after, relatively terrified. She was a good Shadow Broker, she knew it, but she wasn't…an agent on the ground. She collected the information and she had that in place, but…Lal's head…what she did…with the information…

Liara felt like someone with the greatest library in the galaxy, someone who read all the text and missed the volumes of subtext and possibility. Liara had been manipulated by Garrus and he was doing exactly what Cara feared…chipping away at something she needed to keep whole.

She'd thought she was sophisticated…

Lal's head was a frightening place. Liara forgot that in the soft and smooth background of "Cara."

But she really, really did want Garrus to be happy. Wanted them both to be happy. Watching him over those years had been impossible to bear. Now for them to have this chance and to lose it…

Two years of hope and her wanting it so much for them. The fact that all that good will might sabotage galactic events.

She composed herself as much as possible and prepared to contact Garrus, wondering how Cara would manage and suddenly feeling on very shaky footing where Garrus was concerned. Her perspective had flipped between Liara the woman who wanted her friends to find a happy ending…at least a happy middle, and Liara the woman who was the Shadow Broker and should have known better. What else didn't she know?

How did Cara do this every day?

She took a deep breath and opened a channel to Garrus, who answered immediately. She sounded bright, hopefully not falsely bright "She's settled in, same location. She's asked me to set up a secure way for you both to communicate on top of what you have, so I'll get that to you as soon as possible."

"Thank you, Liara! What do you think will work?"

"I have a few ideas, I'll run it through Feron and get back to you. I'm hoping for more protocols on your Omni Tools, so it should be convenient. I hope you enjoy your visit. Come by and see me if you can."

"Or you come by and see us. I may not be able to leave."

You don't want to leave, Garrus…at all. It would have sounded adorable a few hours ago, now it was hopefully not prophetic. "I wouldn't want to miss it. I'll check in tomorrow. How long are you staying?"

"Not sure yet." His voice faded from vague evasion to concern "I wanted to ask you something."

"What is it?"

"I…you've been in her head…I see analysis of Commander Shepard and…nobody ever describes her as beautiful. She's beautiful. Do you think…she doesn't think so? I need…to fix that."

Liara swallowed hard, wanting to cry. Liara thought of the inside of Cara's head and the distinction between pretty and beautiful…and then the content of articles and memorials for Commander Shepard. Garrus was not wrong about public opinion. She was always described with synonyms for 'small' and 'determined' and…nondescript. Childlike if not childish. From there it could be callous…other words. 'Underdeveloped' and 'scrawny.' Liara knew her, and had never…looked at it from that angle. What if…? Those who met Lal for the first time expected a physical myth to match the stories of her will. She was most often described as missing something expected. She should be the epitome of human allure and there was always some side comment about all the missing space she did not take up in superlative expectation. It was…accepted objective truth that meeting her unless it was on the other side of her gun or wits would be a disappointment. She was lacking height, lacking color, lacking curves, lacking…volume. Most notable for lacking it would seem. In her public interviews she was always solemn and…boring. Neither Liara nor Garrus were experts on human beauty, but the idea that Garrus thought Lal was keeping herself from him because she was shy about that…Goddess, Liara didn't even know. Liara picked through that without losing her tongue and said "That's a value judgment. If anybody knows she's valuable, it's Lal. I don't think she cares what anybody else's opinion about her appearance is. She knows you love her and you think she's beautiful. That's all that matters to her."

Garrus smiled, but she wasn't sure he believed her. She wasn't sure she believed herself. "Thanks Liara. All the ways I could get this wrong. I don't want to get this wrong." He looked down, distracted, and said "Thank you, Liara. For everything." He cut off contact.

He sounded…so grateful…and so broken. She didn't doubt that he loved Cara with everything…and now that was frightening where before it had been conspiratorially…adorable.

You have got a lot to learn, T'Soni. You're barely over 100, and you have been acting as though you are a matron who knows what's best for her children. She was worried about Cara for a lot of reasons, one of which was the look in Russ's eyes when conversation turned to her. He was respectful and…lacking all warmth. It had seemed off and Liara had wondered if he was distracted by all the sideways glances he earned at any bar…well, anywhere…he'd quickly excused himself and he seemed to be well known at Eternity. He hadn't stayed for long, leaving with the inevitable magnificent Vakarian.

Russ was definitely never described as lacking anything expected from a Spectre.

His comments had leaned toward:

"Yeah, Shepard's something."

"I've never seen anybody like her."

All in face value approving. Looking somewhat deeper than face value…all careful, all stripped of positive meaning. All…possible to be leaning another way. Now that she thought about it, she was sure of it. That was so unlike him. Cara wouldn't discuss Russ at all. That was…like her…but why? They should have gotten along, and if they weren't getting along, what was wrong? The mission? Or something else? Both? More? There were too many possible reasons for Russ disliking Cara to be as volatile as Garrus adoring her. Russ was as loyal to Garrus as Garrus was to Cara…and if Garrus was unhappy…and Lal was avoiding him…Liara closed her eyes and felt the urge to pray.

Was Garrus asking Russ for advice as he'd just asked Liara? Was Garrus asking Russ if she was okay? Was Russ resenting the hell out of her for not saying so herself?

She had suspected that Russ had been in love with Garrus for a long time, but she didn't know. Was it worse or better if he was or wasn't? She thought Garrus knew. How could he not? Now…how much of everything in the volatile mix…the volume…mattered and Liara couldn't answer those questions. What if Russ was unhappy because Cara was not executing as Shepard? If it weren't for Kaidan behaving as though everything were better than fine, Lal was definitely herself…what if Kaidan were lying for some reason? I don't know what's really happening and that might mean the people I love die. That might mean everyone dies. Goddess, please guide me.

And I just helped add an assassin of unknown provenance because Cara is desperate for help, Garrus wants her off her mission and Russ will want to keep her alive…possibly only so far.

Goddess, please protect me from my 'extraordinary' stupidity. Please protect them.

oOoOoOoOoOo

Cara had wondered if Garrus would just let himself in, but he did knock first. She blinked in deep relief. Garrus climbing into her bed at midnight would have been too much. He was still too much but at least he had some semblance of…boundary…remaining. She had to work with that.

She had to be on stage. She needed a Cara 2.0. She couldn't be Shepard… and there went the full thickness skin-deep flush at knowing he was there. She said calmly as though awaiting room service "Yes?"

"Cara. It's Garrus."

Sounded like he'd practiced saying that for hours in front of a mirror, would have taken her that much time to even attempt to get that much…oh. All that…feeling…in there. And there went her knees.

"Garrus?!" Happy surprise. Not terror. Definitely not terror.

"Yes. I needed to see you."

"Oh! I'm…Garrus! I'm so glad you're here! I'm…wait, I am just out of the bath. Hold on! Not dressed!"

She leaned against the door, having kept her hair damp, fully dressed.

He said fervently "I can help with that."

"No, no, just wait. Please!" Playful. Not. Terrified.

She could hear the laughter in his voice "Okay. I'll wait. I'm warning you though. It's probably a security risk for me to just be…standing here."

"Bath, Garrus!"

"Yes ma'am."

And he did, he waited and that's what she needed to know. She could delay him. Oh. This is…oh.

She opened the door and stepped back as he swept in…with…luggage, oh dear…luggage down and eyes finding her. Glowing advancing Turian was always a shock, and then she was disoriented because he had picked her up and pressed her against the wall of security glass, his body against hers and his arms moving her legs around his hip spurs, looking down as though to make sure she was comfortable and he wouldn't pinch her, and he still had to look far down from his full height to her face, burning and dizzy.

He blinked once, his shoulders straightening. He leaned in, a little taller and a little closer and her back slid up the glass in warm friction. Nice of him to make sure her thighs were not pinched but everything else was. He smiled "I saw you got my messages. I saw…you looked at them a lot. That was…gratifying."

Oh no.

"Liara says you're going to answer me now so I'm glad that's straightened out. Let me hear it from you. You're going to answer me now…right?"

She nodded.

He shook his head solemnly "No, no, no. Not that. I want to hear it. I've been telling you I want to hear it. So let me hear it, Cara."

"I'm going to answer you."

"Every day."

"…every…day."

He closed his eyes, and leaned down to her throat. He breathed hard, in through his nose, as though she were a drug he was inhaling, and maybe she was.

His voice was near her ear, breath tickling there and her spine trying to stiffen though it was melting "What's my job, Cara?"

She didn't answer.

He laughed, a huff of air forced against her skin "Someday I am going to get you to use your words. My job is to reach out across species borders, learn other cultures, accommodate. Compromise. So I can't just be Turian, can I? Not in a proposed human-Turian relationship. Don't human men…fight for what they want? Imagine my relief when I realized that it's my job…to understand that the woman I am in love with is human."

Oh no.

She didn't…couldn't answer. She still only had "Garrus…please…" and that would be the end. The cultural arms race was going to kill her.

Just his arms were going to kill her.

Disarm the advancing Turian. She didn't have to lie. She just looked at him the way she did from the other side of the Omni Tool when he couldn't see and said breathlessly "I missed you."

He closed his eyes and pressed his crest to her hair "I have missed you…" he murmured some words she did not understand.

"What did you say?"

"I…oh. Side effect of death threats. You're like a caltrop. No matter which way you turn…"

Caltrops, spiked implements of war intended to have a point straight up no matter how they fall, scatter them and any path would be impassible until cleared. Delaying tactic. Fitting.

"I'm like just…one…caltrop?" Mild offense. Humor. Disarm the glowing Turian.

He laughed, and he said "Hardly. There was a Turian battle, each road of approach covered in caltrops, the rivers trapped with obstacles that gouged out the bottoms of boats…and I feel like I'm fighting it."

"What's the name of this battle?"

"Cara."

"No, really."

"The siege of Limayeth."

"Garrus. Limayeth is yours. So are all the caltrops unfortunately. I love you. I miss you. I'm sorry you were worried. I told you that you couldn't stop me from trying to protect you."

"Kiss me, Limayeth. Please. I won't talk. I need…please. It's not fair but I'm begging you. Kiss me. We know you can survive that. Trust me to not take more. Reverie but no words other than that I love you. They all mean I love you."

"I know they do. I love you." Her hands moved to his face, her pinky fingers sliding between his jaw and mandible, he pulled them tight to trap her fingers. Palms on plate and then falling, falling…and her eyes closed and she gave him what she promised she wouldn't, took what she told herself she couldn't.

Neither of them knew how to kiss, not really, not artful or practiced. They were tentative and surprised, gestures made and interrupted because of the effect, overwhelming and incomplete, starting over again and again. Reverie was secondary to the right to do it at all.

He hadn't really known what to expect, what to do, how to ask, what to say, just that he had to see her, had to feel her, had to know all the little things about her that were vital to his peace of mind. She wasn't injured. She didn't look like she had been crying. She knew he thought she was beautiful. She let him in. She'd watched his messages…over and over…he'd kissed her before and that had been taking, taking too much.

Her kissing him was…giving. Exhausted by feeling wrong and driven and unbearably selfish, the slightest pressure from her hands, her lips, and to have her give something he would have bet the Citadel she wouldn't…but he asked anyway because he couldn't…not try…not with her.

He was desperate.

Limayeth. Key to a continent on Palaven, the end of a dynasty, the beginning of a new one. Control her gates and everything else fell.

Be kissed by her and continents faded away and dynasties did not matter, and he would not speak, but would be kissed until she had no words of her own.

'Limayeth, wherever the light of the moons and sun shone, all knew her name.'

Wherever the light of all moons, all suns shone, she was the water of the river, the traps at the bottom, the roads that led to other conquests and the caltrops and all he wanted was the gate opening to him because he had asked, because he was dying.

He wouldn't have to go through that again, she'd promised, he believed, the gift of her voice and her kiss and her future.

All the silence meant he loved her too.

She kissed him, breath and water to an exhausted and despairing soul, and then he carried her to a couch, kissed her more, did not speak, and held her until she slept, finally able to face out from inside the fortress rather than being left outside. He could do something with her, not opposing her.

He didn't want to sleep, but he hadn't been able to sleep well since she'd left, part of his desperation. For the first time he fell asleep with her in his arms, a long watch over and faith that she would be there when he woke. She would not leave him.


	15. Chapter 15

Liara came through with enhanced Omni Tool encryption. Lal knew it was not really a solution. It was a bigger problem. A better camouflaged, deeper hole. It was the hole that mattered. She made it seem like a solution so Garrus would be happy. She could not tell him no. She began to think about the countdown toward discovery. No longer if but when. Once again she could not stop, only delay. She also looked forward to talking to him so much more than she should, part of the reason she could not tell him no.

She didn't argue with him, didn't give him anything to push back against. They stayed in the warm circle of Reverie-washed kissing and were people, not jobs. People desperate for each other who eventually had to have jobs again. There wasn't much talking. A flood of pressured 'I love you' in touch and silence, sound and finally knowing what he tasted like, his hide and the edges of plate with her tongue trapped between them. What it felt like to sit in his lap backward, her arms around his shoulders as far as they could go with his hands on her face or back or waist, her breasts joyous that they had a purpose in life finally, pressed to him in a warm drag over plate.

There were a few days of détente bliss as there had been on the Citadel, new lines drawn for his discovered needs.

He experienced her as a need and she could feel that under his words and his touch, his plans and his intentions. They were able to talk in the morning, Reverie wearing off in her sleep. He didn't sleep anywhere near as much as she did, and she didn't know if he slept at all by observation, but he did look less haggard, less desperate, and that brought her a clean joy. She'd be clear headed in the morning, but the reality of withdrawal from bonding chemistry made itself known in sharp experience and implication. It did not just feel good to be with him, it felt actively wrong to be away from him, emotionally and intellectually, a tight pinch of addictive crave.

Somewhere mid morning he would get closer and closer, and she'd want him to, swaying his way. Words would end. His will to be near her was like some great beast of the deep with jaws and thrashing tail that would be content for now if he could only breathe her in, close to the surface by necessity. That beast would be calm with her hands right under the water, in contact directly, slick and cold. He could feel her and she could feel that power glide by, restless and flexing, surface smooth and bunched reactive muscle and threat beneath, ahead and behind.

Garrus invited Orbestan over, who did not come to dinner to Garrus's vague puzzlement, and Liara, who did come to dinner.

Liara found her a source of raspberry jam.

By the third day he had decided he needed to go. She hadn't asked him how long he was staying. Their very fragile peace was reliant on him getting his way until he chose to recognize and honor her need below the surface, under his palms. She counted on his demand to be sated and unopposed, and for him to recognize resonance and magnitude of her purpose. Shepard's purpose, who was absent but as insistent as his bond. He had demanded that she give, and she gave. She knew him well enough to know that a gift would not go unreciprocated because that was who he was. A careful dance where neither of them were appearing to lead, but there was music to be obeyed.

His breath came hard, groans and growls and passionate press, but he did not make further demands on her truth or her body. She made up for that herself, wanting to know more, wanting to know everything, wanting him to know everything, Reverie streaming like sunshine and adoring blue eyes. She restricted herself to one word, one phrase, though every other word bubbled behind her lips. They had an agreement of silence and he helped her keep it, fragile and bizarre trust of seeing each other pressed up against that barrier, straining, her lips and hands gone white, his eyes closed and breath hard. All the words and impulses flooded through her mind, pushed through her skin until she spoke his name with all the accents of what she wanted to say and kissed him again.

The name 'Garrus' could be said in so many ways, murmured and moaned and reverent, fingertips and splayed palms against rough textured plate, thin and sensitive mandible and hide behind his fringe. It could mean everything. It did mean everything. She told him about her parents and about Mindoir and about the moon that she was 'afraid' he would pick out for them…but they all came out 'Garrus' or 'I love you.'

His head cleared from his driving frenzy and she watched him build up the strength to say goodbye. He had packed in anticipation of longer than he had stayed. A hopeful sign of attained equilibrium.

"Limayeth. Every day. I'm going to leave, but by the time you go to sleep tonight, you talk to me. This doesn't count."

"I think I understand. I can probably remember that."

"Come to the Citadel. Soon."

"I know. You have to go be reasonable…"

"And you have to stay unreasonable. I love you. Always and forever."

"I love you. I am so proud of you. Garrus, I want your worst years to be behind you, not in front of you. I died and you didn't know I loved you. Every day of your life, you should know I love you. I'll give you my voice, every day, and I'll say what you need to hear because I want to say it. Remember that I love you. Remember that I want to be with you, every moment. Remember that the silences also say I love you. Please. You have the right to keep me in your heart, to hear that when you need it. I'll say it all in words, but I need you to hear it in the quiet."

"I will remember. Kiss me again, Cara."

She kissed him, the reverse of his arrival. Now her resolve was fragile as newly healed skin and his was stronger. Her desperation was in her fingertips and blush. He would leave and take this with him, his warmth and the way he made her feel everything was perfect. He wouldn't be here when she lifted her head to ask him if he'd heard about something obscure and he set everything aside and said "No…tell me about it."

He wouldn't be here to make her laugh and ruffle her hair and pull her to him with strong arms until she forgot about time existing.

She would be alone again and her only company would be Shepard.

oOoOoOoOoOo

She took Thane out for the first mission back with Orbestan to see how well they worked together. Quietly. They worked quietly. Thane required no bad day. He was silent and lethal, executed her direction immediately.

She thought Russ rolled his eyes a few times at Thane's efficiency. It seemed likely that they would not be friends and nobody was going to speak.

That was okay. She was dispirited and keeping her head down, her usual buoyant curiosity quiescent. She should be fascinated by Thane. She should be anxious about Samara, but right now she missed Garrus with a jaw grinding addict's hunger. Speaking to him at night became a necessary lifeline and she didn't care if he saw that she replayed his messages over and over, in fact maybe he was noticing which parts she played the most.

She liked all the parts. Heart pounding, eyelids and stomach fluttering and now a thousand kisses to recall.

Her body reminded her often that she was being cheated of the greatest treasure known of all species, and that she was a fool.

She couldn't argue.

Meeting Samara required a realignment of hope. She could not have Samara on her crew, but she also could not let this Justicar continue to tear through Illium, threatening the local authorities and people that were down and helpless.

Lal interrupted Samara's pursuit of an Eclipse sister, directed Russ to knock the sister back while Lal got Samara's attention "Justicar Samara. What is it you need to know?"

Samara turned to them, surprised and potentially enraged at being interrupted, biotics glowing, Russ and Thane both flaring their own. Lal continued "That woman is down. I would like to hand her over to the authorities. I cannot allow you to murder her. If she will not speak, her death will accomplish nothing. You need to know something, what is it? I will help you."

Orbestan let out a sound of frustration. Maybe he knew her tone by now and knew that Samara would be a dead end. Wasted effort. He was clearly sick of her wasted effort. She got the impression that Orbestan held against her the fact that there was an assassin standing next to him, so why had she rejected the others? Wonderful. Add hypocrisy to her list of flaws. She didn't explain, he didn't ask, his opinions now in shrugs and eye rolls and nonverbal but disgusted sounds.

Samara stared at her, considering. Lal said "Your code, as I understand it, must suit a purpose. Killing her because you promised to do it is childish. She poses no ongoing threat to you. I offer you another route. A mountain rises in your path, but there is a way around. You can choose to force me to kill you to protect her or you can carefully consider your options in changing circumstances. If you have authority here and my road goes nowhere, your road has only experienced a brief delay."

Samara asked cooly while biotics did not fade from her skin "You are the mountain and the road, Commander Shepard?"

"My code also serves a purpose. Kill her and you have nothing. Spare her and you have us."

"Very well."

Samara explained what it was she needed and agreed to wait at the local station in a non-homicidal fashion. For now.

They advanced through…and…gunship…thank you?

Thane skirted the red sand but she could swear Orbestan was enjoying himself. Not toxic enjoying himself, but the quiet motion through the deserted hallways was echoing with some brutal Turian laughter. She decided in this case she would not question his tolerance, which was…high.

Scary. High.

It resulted in a lot of dead Eclipse. She watched and she would mention it if he began to get sloppy or take damage, but that wasn't the word. The word was…gleeful.

A Volus gentleman was assisted to not assist. Wasea was not difficult, Thane's rifle and Orbestan's focused…glee…meant Lal could barely locate her through the clouds of red sand before she was down.

They returned the name of the ship to Samara, Lal politely requested that Detective Anaya be given permanent custody of the still surviving Eclipse sister. Lal handed over information on Pitne For and Elnora, who had been restrained and retrieved. Thane had cloaked and disarmed her.

Lal left without mentioning that there had been any particular reason that she was helping other than passing through.

oOoOoOoOoOo

Thane was intrigued by Spectre Shepard, watched her pass up the opportunity to recruit Justicar Samara, wondering what had transpired. The matter of an Eclipse Sister with a foot on her throat? Clumsy perhaps, but unforgivable? He had, as was his habit, begun to research Spectre Shepard. Perhaps clumsy was sufficient cause. Spectre Shepard had then ended the lives of scores of Eclipse sisters, to spare one? To preserve Detective Anaya's life?

No one on the ship had approached him to speak other than Spectre Shepard, who had been welcoming and polite. They had spoken of the mission only. He still sensed Siha in her, like scenting salt air and hearing waves crash when the shore was not visible.

Spectre Orbestan was perhaps irritated with her use of their time and failure to recruit Samara? Spectre Orbestan was aloof and silent, but certainly a valued squad member. Orbestan appeared to be looking for a fight in each moment, and denied one might blame Spectre Shepard for not providing it.

Thane educated himself regarding her. He had the habit of research. It was a large part of his success, thorough preparation.

He was not concerned that Orbestan would harm her, but he was interested in why there appeared to be…not tension…but distinct distance, as though tension would result and they both wished to avoid it.

The woman of the deep sea sparked interest in Thane, admiration for the way her mind worked, at least the small pieces he could see. As though she gathered coal in her hands and through the pressure of her mind compressed it to diamond, examined it for flaws and determined the cut and facets, executing that whole process in moments. The mechanics were perhaps not miraculous, the speed undeniably so. Slowly her small size and nondescript appearance became to Thane's mind an asset and not a drawback. She was no longer nondescript. She was where his eyes were drawn. Her eyes in battle were compelling. Her smile in circumstances of her cascading thoughts brought out in him a sense of likeness to his own nature. He recognized his curiosity, which became less idle and more ardent, to be following the pattern of collection of the rare. He wished to understand the water that traveled up, the depths of the green, and the judgment that would not collect a valuable asset herself, instead take on the risk of death to champion an idealistic stance that was…expensive. Expensive in many ways.

She was an exotic curiosity when otherwise his attentions would be on exercise and meditation. He maintained his habits of those things as well, but enjoyed the rich history of story that her life offered.

He had not had many dealings with humans. They had not been enmeshed in the sociopolitical fabric in the way that Asari and Turians were for the majority of his life, though they were beginning to be. The Hanar had given him contracts that protected Hanar interests. He had taken contracts that affected Drell interests. That had caused him to branch out and take contracts addressing slavery of Drell and other species.

It caught his attention that she had been the only known unscathed survivor of the massacre of Mindoir. He was uniquely equipped to get answers. He began further inquiries into her life. Expensive, but he could afford it and she was worthy of investment.

oOoOoOoOoOo

Russ often felt the need to wring a small, pale human neck due to her inexplicable and irritating waste of his time, by proxy his crew's and the Council's. People were dying every day as she passed up powerhouses of recruits that could clear whatever path they needed.

Maybe they'd get out there in about 15 years, but at this rate squad members were going to have to retire due to old age and she would not be able to keep up with that attrition rate.

Garrus had risked his ass to see her on Illium and she still…always…did not smell like him. At least Garrus looked better. Less haggard. Probably all the sleep he got not having any sex. Russ had passed up the opportunity to see Garrus because there was no way he was going to show up and risk surveillance. They might as well all attend a fucking orgy at Azure.

He couldn't face Garrus. Not with her in the room. Russ couldn't look at Shepard across a dinner table and smile at her. He knew what he'd see. Demure, adoring little human, Garrus probably cutting her meal for her into pieces small enough for her to chew, with him checking to make sure she was managing not to choke on it.

He felt she'd also deny that she and Russ barely exchanged words, somehow forced into collusion from different directions to set Garrus's mind at ease. He'd do it, he knew he would, and he would choke on it.

Thank the Spirits that Eternity existed.

Garrus's messages were predictable. How was everything? How was the mission? The inevitable 'How is she?' After Illium Garrus checked in less. Seems he knew how she was now and did not need second hand eyes on her. 'Swing by the Citadel when you can, we should go out for a drink.'

There were only so many ways he could lie. He felt terrible lying to Garrus. He tried to keep it casual and friendly and…yeah.

"Everything's great. The Normandy is an amazing ship. I'm learning a lot." All…technically true, Garrus adding the hoped-for spin about what he was learning.

"How's Krios?"

He hated most questions, but these in particular. There was nothing…wrong with Krios…there just wasn't anything right. Tear down Krios secondhand and he was tearing down Shepard's judgment and safety to Garrus, who would lose more sleep. Paid assassin. What do you think? He's probably going to sell us to the Collectors himself. "He's good at his job. People die fast."

"Thank you, Russ. You have no idea what peace of mind it gives me to have you on her 6."

Anything for you, Garrus. "Hey, I should be thanking you for the opportunity, as always. Save me a seat, next time we're at the Citadel it's a sure thing."

"Know when that's going to be?"

When Spirits count every grain of sand on every beach of every world.

"Hopefully soon."

"Not soon enough. It will be good to see you."

Okay, maybe he didn't hate talking to Garrus as much as he professed. He just didn't like talking about her…

"Likewise."

oOoOoOoOoOo

Thane discovered Commander Shepard had a habit. Mid evening after the galley had cleared she would sit at a table, alone, and read from her Omni Tool, a mug of something at her side. The ship was friendly enough, the crew enthusiastic and dedicated, but she was not a leader who gathered with the clusters of loud people indulging in card and drinking games and raucous laughter. She'd smile in sympathy at laughter but rarely looked up, and she went uninterrupted in her ritual of walking the ship and having one cup and then leaving.

He chose to interrupt her, to see perhaps why the sentient flood passed around her like an island in a river.

Most called her "Commander" Shepard and not Spectre, so he opted for that form of address. He indicated a location opposite her at the utilitarian table and said a quiet "Commander Shepard, may I join you?"

She was startled. She almost spilled her drink. Her smile was near furtive and she was flustered. She swallowed once, and then said "Yes, please. How can I help you Sere Krios?"

Lal was…distracted. He was glowing. Still glowing. She'd seen him in action and unfortunately he had…

He was very attractive. She really, really did not want him to be. Really, a lot. She was not…interested. It was more like the embodiment of everything she should not touch. Every part of her nervous system was telling her how much she should avoid him. She saw him like a painting or a sculpture. Art. Beautiful. Dangerous. Glowing. The craftsmanship inherent in a razor sharp displayed sword.

Do not touch.

She could not explain any of those things. Her heart sped up and she got tongue tied and shy. If he would just stop…glowing…and talking…and moving like that.

It was more fear than anything else. Things in her spine and her skin betrayed her. She huddled. She tried not to huddle. Baby birds instinctively crouched down in their nests and looked small when the shadow of a raptor passed over.

She was too vulnerable to exposure, her relationship with Garrus, her tenuous relationship with personality integrity. Thane Krios was observant, intelligent and methodical, exactly what scared her. The fact that he could kill her 50 ways in the next 10 seconds with the spoon he used to stir his tea did not help.

He doesn't need the spoon.

There was some small shadow of 'he's like me' and that added to the sense of 99.9% terror.

Thane considered his answer. It appeared that she was the one in need of help. She often flushed red, a subtle crack or tremor in her voice when he spoke to her, which was not often, but he was planning on making it more often. He attempted to predict whether or not she would excuse herself as soon as possible, that could perhaps be why she was so often alone. Distraction would be best. "There is no concern for the mission. I wished to talk."

She blinked and those words…that…sounded innocuous but couldn't be.

He sat and gestured to her mug "What is that?"

She almost answered dumbly 'A mug' and then considered telling him that it was alcoholic rotgut from Tuchanka. She did not want to be caught in such a ridiculous lie. Thane made her feel like he looked straight through her and although she was a good liar, he made her not want to risk it. "It's…hot chocolate."

He knew nothing about human food. He cultivated a curious expression "What is chocolate?"

What followed was a nervous lecture with gestures, her almost knocking over her mug again, his hand steadying it. She did not notice because she seemed to have a breadth and depth of knowledge about chocolate and the will to tell it. There were more gestures and stories of modern and historical economic and political ramifications, storage methods and fat content. Her chocolate went cold. He sipped his tea in silence, suppressing an unaccustomed smile at her misplaced and odd passion for minutiae.

Perhaps nobody spoke to her for this reason?

He was nearly tempted to ask her to tell him about the floor covering in the room, or maybe the history of the design of a space faring salt shaker. Perhaps she could enlighten him.

She wound down and then said, face flushing again "That's…what that is."

"Yours has gone cold, perhaps I could reheat it for you?"

"What? No. No. Thank you. I…I should go."

oOoOoOoOoOo

He came back, not the next night, but the day after, his chosen method one of accustoming a wild animal to his presence. She was easily startled, easy to flush in the sense that she could preemptively run or the color would spread over her face.

She did not stop having hot chocolate in the galley. He imagined it was her time to be easily approached. A duty. He took advantage, fascinated.

Information on her life began to trickle through his Omni Tool and alerts, not a great deal about her that he did not already know. Small things. He invested in hiring someone to physically retrieve the sealed files of Mindoir. It would take some time.

He had time, taking an odd pleasure in listening to her passion for small things. She seemed fragile as eggshells, brittle and still Siha, more Siha. He became comfortable with protecting her, faith that she was who she represented herself to be, and he seemed to monopolize her time. No one else approached.

Spectre Orbestan occasionally saw them seated together, a roll of his eyes or a snort indicating his deep disapproval.

Interesting. If there was someone Orbestan was not interested in, it was Commander Shepard. He should diversify his research and learn more about the second Spectre on board the Normandy.

Thane brought her gifts of small curiosities and silence held out in a steady palm. No sudden moves, no observations about her flushing skin and beating heart. He no longer offered to warm her chocolate or offered to do anything at all for her. He learned not to draw her attention to herself or to him, only the topic at hand. He listened to her and spoke rarely.

Occasionally she would have an odd streak of powder in her hair or on her casuals. He would contemplate obtaining a sample while she spoke with fervor about…anything…everything. She was easily distracted. All he needed was a ready topic and her guarded flush would fade, her opinions would spread their wings and make their powerful way to the free sky.

Did she have a drug habit that resulted in her mood and personality inconsistencies? That would be disappointing and he did not wish for that to be true. He would test that theory, but he preferred to think that her flush and stutter were the result of guilty attraction, not guilty drug use.

He learned her interval, like fireworks. She had a pace and a rise and a fall. He excused himself before she grew wholly self conscious. She avoided eye contact.

He counted cold mugs of chocolate as success.

oOoOoOoOoOo

Thane believed intellectual pursuit to be what she sought, her agile mind working over and through each detail that surrounded her. He'd seen her face light often as he listened. He'd watched her surreptitiously check her Omni Tool, make notes and do research on the smallest of things. Her facial expression would ease. Her humor would come more freely.

Thane had led a relatively silent life of action over words, but it appeared that conversation would be unavoidable, a necessity. He had observed her habits. She spent much of her time alone in her cabin. As far as he was able to determine, nobody had been in her cabin. He would have to wait to be invited. She had grown somewhat more comfortable with him, fewer incidents with near spilled beverages. She still flushed and they both ignored it. He enjoyed his conversations with her. She did not gossip. She did not share the life stories of her crew. He told her of Irikah. He told her of Kepral's. He told her of Drell history and culture, she listened, rapt and interested, supportive and assuring confidences would be kept. She spoke only truths that belonged to her and of the small indulgences of enthusiasm that swept through her mind. She was hesitant and unwilling to discuss herself other than in the most general of terms.

He steered the conversation to playing a Drell board game. He mentioned Pon-Ifa and her face was lit with immediate interest and enthusiasm. He was gratified to bring that expression to her face.

She agreed to meet him in his quarters. Lal wanted to be careful, but she was overwhelmingly thrilled. Pon-Ifa was…well…most people didn't know about it. She wasn't supposed to know about it as a human. It was a game that had developed religious and cultural significance over time, elaborate museum pieces of Pon-Ifa sets seen but the rules unknown, considered a Drell prerogative only. Silvie had a set and had taught her to play. Silvie had told her a story of having a close Drell associate who taught her the game. The way she had said 'associate' had been thrilling. She had imagined a female Drell lover, games into the night, both of them wrapped in diaphanous robes. Drell everything seemed secretive and elegant and beautiful. The game itself was intricate and challenging. She was not going to miss the opportunity to be taught how to play Pon-Ifa by a Drell assassin.

Just…no diaphanous Drell robes. Wouldn't that be lovely, though, to be in the desert, in an elaborate tent, fire pots burning and elegant hands moving pieces as the moon rose and the stars turned. She flushed at the thought. Young Cara had played Pon-Ifa against herself on a homemade board late into the night sometimes, talking to herself, with the window open. Had to have a breeze. Was there a moon? She was sure she'd looked it up at the time but she did not remember. She asked "Does Rakhana have a moon?"

Thane answered with a slow blink at the odd question "No." He had learned not to ask Commander Shepard "Why?" She would often evade or flee when she realized she had been observed making little sense and providing no context.

She didn't explain. This was exciting.

Thane had a moment of watching her face, bright eyes and anticipation. She had grown to seem lovely to him, her odd shyness and vulnerabilities in counterpoint to her military career and observed lethality. His protectiveness had expanded and had borders that verged on territoriality. He wanted her smiles, her enthusiasm that highlighted the small and insignificant, as though choosing one blade of grass a day to exalt and examine. Her attention upon a subject brought it poetic importance. He brought out the board and the anticipation on her face seemed like earned invitation, a prelude to touching a courted wild, shying creature. He knew better than to think of her as easy prey, but he did not necessarily value easy. He preferred a challenge. The thought of challenge and anticipation, redrawn and sharp in her features, not in the galley but here in his quarters resulted in subtle channels of arousal, a throb against his thigh. It was an anticipatory pleasure and a familiar response to seeing her now as he considered how to breech her defenses, whatever they were. Her size and appearance, once drawbacks, shifted in his internal descriptors from 'small' to 'tight,' 'thin' to 'lithe' and 'colorless' as the preferred setting to the emerald gems that made up her eyes. He would enjoy winning Pon-Ifa, describing the motions and moves and theory behind reaching an opposed goal. She was the opposition and the goal, and the game would reinforce inevitability.

He did not have a solid board he carried with him, too cumbersome. He had a holographic simulation that took up much of the table between them. He explained the boards and the goal, the pieces and their moves, the spheres, their influence and their significance.

Lal was entranced, caught in the evocative, imagined scent of Drell spice in the air and breezes. Turned out Silvie had not been misled, Thane's explanation mirrored what she'd been taught, Silvie's personal breech of decorum making Lal smile.

Thane explained the boards as he activated them one by one. A central board with eight radiating spokes to smaller boards. Each board represented a sphere of political influence such as religion, media, troops, supplies, etc. Each faction had its strengths and weaknesses. Religion was weak to media, but media was weak to military, and so on. Pieces altered in role and strength according to the board they inhabited and which player controlled them. The center board represented Clan structure, the ruling family, and those pieces could not radiate out. The Heirophant was strongest on her home board of religious influence unless attacked by a representative of the media. A Heirophant triumphant on her board and moving with her support pieces to attack the board representing the treasury and supply chain was devastating to that sphere. Unlike human chess, this was not primarily a game of direct conquest. The preferred, more elegant solution was to hijack pieces and have them serve the other side.

The central board must be defended while outer fights were conducted. Nine conflicts began and progressed simultaneously, converging to the center and capable of radiating back out. He showed her examples of each board, each sphere. The main piece of concern was the Doyenne on the center board. Capture of her was capture of the game.

Watching anticipation sharpen the lines of her face, he gave only minimal focus to the pieces and their function. She was avidly enthusiastic, rapt. He had to resist the strong urge to pull her halfway across the table by her lithe arms, anticipating watching her delicate eyes widen in shock. As he explained each new set of Pon-Ifa moves and concepts, he elaborated upon his preferred outcome. Winning at Pon-Ifa would be easy. Seducing her was becoming in theory easier.

She soaked in each remembered move, images of Drell history, Silvie's imaginary lover, invigorated by her own admittedly self indulgent fantasies of Clan intrigue. She knew the names of the Clans that had inspired the game, the ways that historical battles had shaped how the pieces were arranged. Silvie and her parents had stopped playing Pon-Ifa with her after a while. Lal had enthusiastically trounced everyone until they told her to…well…go play with herself. She had programmed Georgia to play against her, but she always beat Georgia. She was looking forward to losing to a Drell master of the game, her smile irrepressible and her eyes roaming the board, taking in the remembered intricacies. His voice was warm and exactly what she loved to hear…informative. Something she could not learn anywhere else, a treasured and rare opportunity.

Thane was as always amused and somewhat insulted that she rarely looked at him, her avid interest on the game. His fantasies took a turn, intent on getting her attention more fully, with her back flush to the table, breathless and wide eyed, the projection of the Pon-Ifa board and pieces visible on and around them. His imagination allowed no space between them, her hands held over her head with one of his, his mouth on hers, venom and persuasion and force all brought to bear until her breath came faster, until he told her to wrap her legs around his hips if they were not already there. He had progressed to fully hard, straining, imagining her eyes, always her eyes, depths of jewel-toned green. Fortunately his voice was still under his smooth control and the description of the game so rote that it took little concentration. He suppressed the rough hiss he'd enjoy speaking into her skin, into her ears so he could feel the tremor in her muscles in response, feel her give way as he pressed her down.

He explained elements of straightforward assault and subversion, her eyes directly on the board and his hands, allowing him to look at her without being observed.

He suggested playing each board individually, but to his surprise she said quickly "No, I think I've got it. I'd like to try a real game."

He smiled and said "A real game it is then." He set the pieces with a touch to the controls, and he watched her as she watched the board.

She was suddenly unreadable. He was often able to determine where someone was going to move, what their plans were based upon where they were looking. She gave him nothing.

Perhaps she had learned that from playing chess. The games were not the same but the execution of concealing strategy was. See the board and projected moves internally, do not focus. Perhaps she had no thoughts to display and she was trying to remember rules. Pon-Ifa was complicated and he had trained for years under a master until he had been able to beat her consistently. Although not ranked as he was not a public figure, he had sought out each ranked master of the game privately, played against them and won. He had not lost a game since age 17.

He considered that his advantage here with the game and with her was entirely unfair. He was deeply satisfied with that and the inevitable outcome. This was something that could fascinate her as he found his way to her, until she was on this table, flushed from cover, drawn to his open palm, driven to begging.

Her head was tilted so he could not see her eyes. He experienced that as frank displeasure. Willing her to look up would accomplish nothing at the moment, but he wished to kiss her, a brief fantasy of bringing her lips to his, kissing her until venom pounded through her and she was prone to hypnotic suggestion, hallucination blooming in her mind. His lips to hers and then his voice in her ear "Siha, when I am in a room with you, meet my eyes. Find my eyes." She would, compelled even in battle likely to find him. That added a hard surge to his cock, wishing to see her helpless and enthralled to that small extent, that the well of her eyes was open to him. Whatever risk in a fight that would bring, he would protect her from it. Another right he would take. Would he let her know he had asked that of her or take that memory and leave only the ringing urge?

That depended entirely upon how much displeasure he experienced in the near future from being denied her gaze.

She made nonsensical opening moves, but they were not illegal. She moved the pieces properly, so he did not correct her. He could break it down afterward for her, explain missteps. He could tap a piece and withdraw his hand, and her eyes might be drawn to him from following that movement. Perhaps he would not speak until her eyes met his. Something to test and enjoy.

He contemplating breaking into her quarters, his main concern was EDI. He had no way yet to bypass her, but he would work on that. There were ways. Perhaps not physical infiltration, but technical and remote. He would like to go there himself and touch, see, smell, create an evocative memory, but that would likely have to wait until she invited him there.

Lal was thrilled, pulse pounding and thirsty to learn. She'd made a few moves that were deeply risky but were intended to produce a synergistic trap. Something she'd developed while trying to play both sides of the game herself, wondering if it would work. There was a very small advantage to be gained by setting factions up to fall in a particular order. Although theoretically they each were equivalent in weakness to others, there were intricacies that could be exploited. If he caught it early she was doomed. If she was able to play it out without interference, with her sacrificing the more classical targets, her advantage multiplied with each move until he noticed the pattern and tried to counter it, then noticed the pattern of forced countering. Possibly she'd get slaughtered and then they'd start over. She had so many gambits she'd built in her head. She wanted to try them all.

She wasn't Drell, but she did have an excellent memory, particularly for things that obsessed her, and Pon-Ifa had taken up a fascinated chunk of her time. She believed Thane was playing a standard game, an approach Silvie had shown her. It was unfair to him and she felt slightly guilty. She was able to predict what he was doing and hopefully she looked only random and uneducated to him. This would probably only work once if it worked at all. Then she began to wonder if he was letting her win.

He was pleasantly lost in imagining exploring her body with his mouth at her throat and his hand spanning her waist when his first piece was not captured, but hijacked. She still was not looking at him. He imagined it luck, as that was one board and he was ahead on the other eight. Until his second piece, on another board, was hijacked and the gathered tide of her seemingly nonsensical moves began to crash in on his defenses. She had primary traps, secondary traps, and moved hijacked pieces at great risk to reinforce offense. He had difficulty taking pieces in direct assault because she appeared to have predicted his approach and trapped him in a bottleneck making retreat impossible and forcing him to take in direct conquest her mid value pieces while she hijacked higher value ones of his. He began to see that each move he made was hedged with multiple counters and possibilities, resulting in greater loss if he proceeded in the conservative style that he had been taught to emulate, that he was using to teach a supposed beginner.

It was clear that it was too late for him to counter effectively. Visions of her helpless under his body dissipated and were replaced with him at her mercy. That did not change him being painfully hard. It made it simultaneously worse and better. Instead of her beneath his body, he imagined her delicate, fragile hands on the tabs of his jacket collar, directing him where she wished.

He savored the irony, his concealed shock, and now the sudden, fierce attraction, able to blatantly stare at her as she considered only the board, her face inscrutable and his lips lifted in a smile. Smiles came often in her presence. Throughout his life they had been rare. This however was a smile in tribute to the one she showed in battle, this woman of eggshells and the sea.

The woman who was often so flustered in his presence was casually destroying a lifetime of practiced and gained accomplishment, a crowning glory and secret of his culture. She won, and he must let her do so because there was no conceding in Pon-Ifa, each move must be made, a philosophy of acceptance of fate, a particular discipline of the game. It was more difficult for her at the end as he focused on the complicated ramifications of each move against her whimsical and…vicious…mind.

She was excited that she remembered and knew the rules. He hadn't stopped her and he'd obviously let her win. He'd rallied by the end but only after he'd fallen just that little bit behind and he never caught up. She thought it was kind of him, and she hoped she'd managed to at least show she took the game seriously and appreciated his time. Perhaps Drell were not allowed to defeat their superior officers? When the final move had been made and his Doyenne captured, she looked up at him for the first time since the game began. She'd been unwilling to meet his eye, did not want to give anything away, tried to pay the most respect she could to the opportunity to learn.

His lips were quirked in an appreciative smile as he said "Congratulations, Siha."

"What does Siha mean?"

"Perhaps I will tell you some day."

"I'd enjoy a rematch. Hopefully I can win and gain an explanation."

"And what do I get if I win?"

"Me asking you again what Siha means." She hoped she could find out what it meant in the meantime, her curiosity did not appreciate being kept waiting. She had to go. She'd ignored several alerts while she was here.

He inclined his head "I would enjoy another game. At your convenience. I imagine you have much you must do at this time."

She rose and said "Yes, unfortunately. Commander stuff. Thank you, Thane…that was…so much fun."

He kept his spine straight and inclined his head. After she left he let out a deep breath, leaned back and adjusted to a slightly more comfortable angle, replayed each move, found it impossible to believe that was the first time she had played Pon-Ifa, but could not imagine where she had learned it. One more mystery about her past to explore.

A deep and wide reminder that she was not who she appeared to be and he would enjoy discovering where she had learned.

Regardless of where she had learned, the depth of understanding of the game permitting her to create a fine tuned deception that was reactive to each of his moves was indicative of an intellect that loomed like something only found on Earth and not Rakhana. Iceberg. Small and possibly unimpressive on the surface. Composed of cold depths unseen.

Steeped now in lust and anticipation he rose and moved to the door of his quarters, locked it against her return and leaned one hand against the door. He freed his cock from his pants. He bent his head and closed his eyes, deeply sensitive and aching from the prolonged amount of time spent straining against leather tailored to conceal arousal.

In the background of his mind formed a permanent decision and a shift in intent. He was not going to stop until he knew everything he needed to know about her, until she wanted him as much as he wanted her. The fact that he would have to be as careful, audacious and anticipatory as she had been on the Pon-Ifa board made it sweeter as a goal. He ran his thumb over the head of his cock, slick and ruinously sensitive, the skin bearing the imprint of a hard-pressed seam. He imagined her tongue in place of his thumb. His cock twitched, surged, and he filled in the fantasy with more details. He wanted her on her knees, looking up at him with his hands twisted into the hair he was so curious about, her hands closing around the length of his cock, her tongue along his ridges, lips around him with his hands guiding her. She'd be hungry for venom and her tongue and throat…he wanted her as hungry as he'd been, watching her across the table, as hungry as he was right now.

He did not wish to lose the next game, wanted her to ask him what Siha meant time after time, make her frustrated. He would not tell her until she was helpless, begging and hoarse. He would take every word from her except for his name and the word please. He would make her beg on the table where the game sat now frozen in his defeat. He would be in her quarters because she invited him, could not go long without him without hunger rising to overwhelm her. Power. There was power in that lithe frame and sea-deep eyes. He could hold that power in the span of his hands around her waist, in the whisper of venom in her blood and ear. Her eyes and body would turn to his.

Siha.

He gritted his teeth, his upper lip curled into a snarl and his open palm against the door braced fingernails against the metal to the point of shards of pain, his hand working the length of his cock, a tight surge of impending orgasm built as he imagined her panting and spent under his body, tightening around him in ripples, his teeth at her throat and the hissing rasp of her name escaping his lips, her breasts against his chest and his hand pressing fingers into the flesh of her ass as he held her tighter to his body, emptying into her, her head back as she loosed a ragged scream.

He came in a fierce, thick rush, a harsh groan and a long moan of release, relaxing into panting and muscles loosening, endorphins and pleasure streaming through his blood. He rested his head against the metal door for a few long moments. Then he chose actions on his path to that moment. He had to clean up. He had to discover every possible thing he could about human female bodies and how they experienced pleasure. Possibly hire a woman to tutor him in such matters before the practical aspects of sex with another species resulted in less than satisfactory results.


	16. Chapter 16

Thane continued his information gathering. He solved the issue of surveillance in her quarters with a small recording device, optically transparent, microscopic thickness when inert, remotely controlled. As she was a creature of habit, he placed it under her accustomed seat, joined her for her mug of chocolate, directed it to stop through his Omni Tool after it had detected heat and begun to move on its own toward her. She took it back to her quarters. He moved it to a safe vantage point. The main risk of exposure of surveillance was often in detected transmission. There would be no transmission and a shielded recording. She had a fish tank and he directed it by remote to its frame. The ambient movement, fluctuating light and temperature levels would make it difficult if not impossible to detect. He would retrieve it after two weeks. He was four days into that cycle.

He received the stand-alone and sealed recording of Lal Shepard's rescue from Mindoir. He had done background research on the location. There were conflicting characterizations of the environment in which she'd theoretically spent her youth. It had been a farming community, eighteen years into production and beginning to turn a consistent profit by the time it had been razed. Successful enough as a venture that it had been re-colonized with greater security and connection to infrastructure, now productive and lucrative.

Accusations of it being a malignant, backward religious community had arisen, that reason blamed for its isolation and therefore as though it had invited attack. This was at least debatable, as Mindoir at the time had been out beyond the edge of comm buoy and patrol coverage, and there was no formalized religious affiliation that Thane could discover. Mindoir had been exceptional in its projected ability to grow produce, and despite its isolation, venture capital wished to establish a human presence there before it was lost to another species willing to take the risk and reap the potentially rich rewards. Many of the choices of security and development appeared to be due to practical and not religious concerns. Limited security due to limited funds, limited patrols based on its location, limited communication based on access. It had been risky, but not in his opinion reckless, and any number of colonies had faced the same challenges. That was the nature of exploration. The estimated cost of establishing infrastructure and security on the level of being able to stop the undivided attentions of several Batarian warships would have more than doubled the cost of the venture and made it prohibitive. The intent was to increase security as the value of the colony progressed. They had made some progress, but not enough. The risks had not been concealed or understated in the mission statement and potential colonists were made well aware and signed off on them.

Thane had obtained the records of the original applicants to the colonization of Mindoir, hoping to gain insight into the composition of the populace. The formal applications did not address religious affiliation as a requirement or disqualification, it was absent in the otherwise thorough vetting process. The company investing in Mindoir had a policy of freedom of religion. Most applicants were chosen for practical concerns and then an accepted applicant could bring along family if approved.

One applicant in particular captured his attention, Glenn Blake. His application was thorough enough to provide photographic and video documented evidence of his bona fides and accomplishments. He was a botanist, 34 years old when his application was accepted. He looked like Lal, green eyes and red hair, the same pale skin and freckles. Searches on Glenn Blake on Earth linked him romantically with a woman, Carolina Mencin. They shared the same coloring. That coloring was a curiosity in itself, something recessive, rare and not shared by any other colonist or human Thane had encountered other than Lal. Carolina was a mixed martial artist, successful in exhibition, instruction and competition. The way she moved…he approved. The same style was reflected in the way Lal moved. Not only the way she moved, the way she was made. Likely her mother and instructor.

It explained Lal's distinct method in combat. It had not been taught in her military training. She was the clear genetic and stylistic legacy of Carolina Mencin, yet Lal claimed no memory of her.

The science surrounding amnesia was contradictory and subjective. There was no physiologically identified mechanism for it. Although it was possible that a separate part of the human brain managed muscle memory or language, and other parts managed memories of family and personality, this was his first step toward doubt that Lal had forgotten her life. Perhaps she had remembered partially at a later date? How would one retain the significance of the moves made without the face or the voice of the instructor, repetition ingrained? To a Drell mind it was impossible to imagine those elements separated.

How could she retain a fluid and reactive martial arts style that had been developed, practiced and taught by one individual, yet forget that individual was her mother?

The function of human memory and the concept of memory loss were not areas where he was an expert. He could not formulate any hard guidelines that would set someone with true amnesia apart from one simulating amnesia other than being a flawed liar.

Lal Shepard was a flawless liar. Not perhaps in her minutiae but in her capacity to command or play Pon-Ifa.

There were instances of physical brain trauma at odds with psychological trauma, producing different classifications of amnesia. Unlike Drell storage of all aspects of memory, humans had what appeared to be an inefficient and unreliable chain of long term, short term, retention, creation, alteration and storage of memory. Amnesia did not exist in Drell psychological histories. Drell memory was flawless and redundant. A Drell was occasionally born with the capacity to forget, but that was the brain and not the mind, a deficit in storage or retrieval mechanics. A neurotypical Drell's memory was stored in many locations, duplicated with the same careful mechanics comparable to the way their DNA was propagated. Drell were also much less prone to random mutation through copying error than humans. A Drell brain was not organized into sectors the way human memory was, but globally redundant. Damage to a Drell brain would result in loss of life function before significant memory loss. Damage to a Drell mind did not result in loss of memory.

He addressed her mind, not her brain. Her mind was formidable. Had it always been?

Glenn and Carolina both disappeared from records on Earth. Those names did not correlate to Mindoir, but the time frame did. With the lead of searching for a skilled botanist, he was able to find them again in the Mindoir registries. It appeared they had combined marriage and change of name in their migration. The application was essentially for Glenn Blake plus one, then their names changed to Saoirse and Ronan Fanning upon registration on Mindoir, confirmed by a picture and his correlated accomplishments and therefore tasks assigned.

They were smiling, joyous, open adoration and celebration on their faces, turned partway toward each other and not the camera, arms around each other.

Thane had spent a life as a professional voyeur, accustomed to moments of depravity. Moments of shared love that created a new world were not familiar. He put the picture aside.

He reluctantly searched the survivor and casualty reports. Documentation of Saoirse and Ronan's scorched bodies beside each other, hands held, three Batarian bodies nearby.

Words came unbidden to his mind in prayer. Kalahira guide them to the Shores. That they were human did not matter. These had been Whole people.

Images came unbidden of Irikah's body. Damage to a Drell mind did not result in loss of memory.

He closed his eyes, breathed steadily until the images faded. He prayed to Amonkira to guide his Path. He was a hunter, and at the end of every successful hunt was the loss of life.

Not Lal's. Of that he must be certain, and to be certain he must walk where Amonkira led.

He returned to facts, not faces.

Two years after arrival on Mindoir Saoirse and Ronan had a daughter named Cara.

Her name was Cara Fanning.

Did she know it?

Lal Shepard was sixteen at the time of her rescue, though rescuers had assigned her an age of thirteen because Lal Shepard theoretically could not recall her age and she resembled a typical thirteen-year-old's build according to medical examination. That arbitrary assignment of age appeared to be a factor in the inability of later searches by the media to identify her or associate her with the Fanning family. Looking specifically, Cara Fanning's body had not been recovered and neither had she been located with the survivors. This was not conclusive as many bodies of colonists had been burned and without biometric data went unidentified.

Mindoir had been a poorly documented, insecure port. Speculation whispered that perhaps the Batarians had brought her there. Perhaps she was an unfortunate child abandoned there by some other passing vessel that would not return. Perhaps her mind was gone for reasons best not sought.

He knew much of the mystery of Commander Shepard's identity. She had been young and traumatized, tragically unknown. Nobody claimed Lal Shepard as a relative. No records found by that name. With her memory lost and her insistence on knowing her name but not her circumstances, there was nothing that could be done unless someone from the public spoke for her, and nobody did. Later in her career many with the name Shepard had considered themselves somehow hopefully related. None with the names of Blake or Mencin or Fanning. No family name of Shepard anywhere in Mindoir records. When she became more famous after Elysium, attempts were made again to find family, resulting in nothing. She had made no public comment on the subject.

There had been no digital or biometric records of births on Mindoir, only paper certificates kept at the medical facility where children were born. There were 34 female children in the colony that might have been approximately her miscalculated age, 13, at the time of her rescue according to damaged and limited records. The medical facility had taken damage, so there was no way to know if her record had been destroyed. With her insistence on her name, the only thing psychological advisors offered was to give her time to recover from the trauma, possibly her memory would return. Lal Shepard refused further interviews or counseling, insisted on her name and on the loss of her memory in each occurrence where it was forced to her attention.

It seemed that Saoirse and Ronan Fanning had cut ties with Earth and any associations there. They disappeared together and nobody was able to link them with Mindoir or to someone by the name of Lal Shepard.

He considered tracing her family tree from recovered records of her parents, was idly curious but did not find it relevant to understanding the woman now. He doubted that they were involved in criminal intrigue. It seemed likely they wished only a fresh start, a new life in a new place together.

No hint of criminal involvement in their history, no financial problems, no incarcerations, no sign of anything other than a botanist wishing to explore and produce something new, bringing the woman he loved and who clearly loved him in return with him. They were both reasonably wealthy and successful in their chosen fields on Earth. Ronan's projected contributions meant the company invested in him. Some applicants were accepted because they paid their way generously. Ronan was paid well to be a speculative pioneer.

Thane did trace back their potential living family out of curiosity. Both only children. Both sets of parents dead. No living relatives to Cara Fanning available, now or then.

Unlikely that the attack on Mindoir had been motivated by their presence or that their presence on Mindoir had anything to do with anything other than pioneer spirit, private people leading an idyllic private life. So why hide her name?

He began the recording of young…he was convinced of it…Cara Fanning being interviewed, a rare tingle acknowledging the presence of the eerie on his skin.

She had been a small child as she was a small adult, hair longer, frame slight. She had a blanket wrapped around her, her arms and hands and her yellow blouse superficially but repeatedly scratched and bloody from what appeared to be the struggles of a restrained orange kitten held in her loosely basketed hands.

An adult voice off camera "Are you sure you don't want to go to the doctor?"

"I'm okay. The Batarians didn't do this. Just my cat. Could you please get him…"

"We need to make sure you're okay."

A pause from Cara, a clench to her jaw, a twist to her eyes "I'm okay. Can I have a box, please, and something for him to eat and drink?"

"Are you hungry?"

"Just…please…I'll tell you anything you want…"

That was a lie. Subtle but distinct. She was not panicked, not terrified, only insistent on care for the kitten. Misdirection and appeal for sympathy. It was in her eyes. Always her eyes. It was in her jaw and the way her hands were gentle, patient and she did not draw any attention to the pain she must be in when the kitten bit and scratched.

"Please…he's tired and he's hungry and I can't…"

The sound of a scuff of a chair on the floor, a closing door, retreating steps. Cara sat with her jaw clenched. Not crying, though there were tear tracks through the grime on her face. The distress faded from her voice and her manner changed, she was calm and soothing. She whispered "It's okay, Hale. It's going to be okay. I know you didn't mean to hurt me. It's over. We're safe. I just can't put you down because you'll run and you don't understand. You might get hurt. You're really little you know. Soon you'll be able to take a nap. I'll get you some food. Hey…maybe meat. No more synth stuff, real meat for you. I bet you'll like it. We can't go back, but we can do our best here. Mom and dad are dead but we will do our best, what they would have wanted. I'll get some paper, you can chase soon. I'll even bring them back for you, I promise. I'm sorry we can't go back. I know you liked it there. You were getting really good at showing those embaka stems who was boss." There were any number of ways to restrain a kitten to keep from being injured, all of which would result in more distress to the kitten. He believed she knew that. She did not want the kitten to feel helpless. She preferred bleeding.

She did not know she was being recorded. This recording had never been reviewed. He had the only copy. It had been preserved only as potential evidence that they had followed protocols and cared for her legally. The only person with the right to see it was Lal Shepard herself, and she did not make that request, perhaps did not know it existed. He knew the outcome of Cara Fanning's interview. There had been no adult to provide proof of kin or consent. She had been a relatively uninjured survivor and the hunt was active for hundreds of people, attention directed toward that and identification of bodies. Lal Shepard had been an abandoned footnote until she had become more famous. At the time of this recording she was a procedural difficulty to authorities trying to classify her and get her to family.

The off camera adult returned and paused the recording. The next sequence was of Cara clean, dressed, scratches treated and her kitten in a box pushed up against the leg of her chair, her hand on the upper edge. He doubted she ever let that box out of her sight. She was being shown pictures of colonists. She was asked if she recognized them. Possibly those known to have children her age.

"I told you, my name is Lal Shepard. I don't know who these people are. I don't remember." Faded, listless. Betrayed only by the tightness of her hand on the edge of the box. The interviewer could not see her hand at that angle, but the camera revealed her hand to be a bellwether of her distress.

"Just look again, please. Sometimes it takes a little while before memory comes back."

Photos passed in front of her and Thane recognized her expression. Defiance. Not fear, not anger. Defiance.

She was prepared. She knew the pictures of her parents were coming, and when they did, the interviewers were expectant because they looked alike, nearly impossible that they were not related.

They thought she was Cara Fanning. They also likely knew by now that Saoirse and Ronan Fanning were dead and had no family listed as contacts, but if they could identify her as related, then they could put out a search by name.

"No, I don't recognize them." Her hand on the box tightened to white knuckled.

Her voice didn't crack, her eyes didn't fall, through all the insistence that she look again, be sure.

"No, I'm sorry. I don't want to waste your time. I'm not trying to be difficult. I just don't recognize them."

"Their names are…Swarsee…and Ronan Fanning. They have a daughter, about your age, her name is Cara Fanning."

She didn't look at the picture again, but instead turned distressed and supplicant helpless green eyes to the interviewer "I hope they're okay. Have they rescued…all those people?"

Distraction. She distracted them, they told her that no, the colonists had not been recovered. They moved on, and he could not tell which of the faces that passed in front of her in an endless and torturous succession she did or did not recognize, but he did know that she had not forgotten.

They had tried to convince her that she was who she was and she had denied it. Her identity had not been uncovered because she did the same thing repeatedly throughout her life. Even had rescue workers or psychologists or later reporters discovered she looked like someone with the name Fanning, those names led nowhere. The survivors of Mindoir varied in mental capacity after their rescue, unreliable. None had recognized Lal Shepard. Their brains had been damaged as well as their minds, and the damage had been popularly attributed to their religious tendencies. To him it appeared to be typical damage from those having control chips placed by Batarian captors who made the process and their subsequent servitude as brutal as possible.

It was a story with only one witness, and she would not tell it. She was then as she was now, a being insistent on an idealistic absolute for her own reasons, which she would not explain but would enforce.

At sixteen she was the smartest person in the room. She was likely the smartest person in any room she'd ever occupied, present voyeuristic company included.

He did not know why she hid her identity, but had faith it was for a good reason. Had she been able to predict the condemnation of the Mindoir colonists? She knew her parents were dead. Despite her professed hope of their recovery, that was a distraction. She likely had seen their bodies. Now their joined hands made sense. They had not heroically reached for each other. It was unlikely that the Batarians who finished them after they had killed the other three would allow that. They had been overwhelmed and beaten to death, and Cara had found them and moved them together. Cara then had arranged for an outcome that resulted in her privacy. She would never see that picture again and that goal had required her convincing denial. Far-reaching calculation for a traumatized child.

The thought of 'privacy' and the existence of a small recorder in her room made him simultaneously disgusted with himself and doubly curious. Where before he had been gathering information on a woman he would pursue until she yielded, now the image of her adult eyes, her adult mind, her allure…was tempered with the overlay of a small child with scratches on her skin, tear tracks through the grime on her face likely the residue of burning bodies and sea green defiance.

He was Drell. He could not forget.

Prayers to Amonkira did not lead back, but only forward.

He had parsed her career briefly in overview and there had been no point in time in which a young military recruit could have encountered much less mastered Pon-Ifa. She learned it on Mindoir, as she had a complicated system of martial arts and an obscure but unyielding sense of ethical guidance.

He felt slightly better. He preferred the narrative that much of her early life had been dedicated to the game. How she had learned it on an isolated colony…

The secrets of your own culture are not as well kept as the secrets in that 'helpless' child's head.

He had his own childhood expectations, and by sixteen could have done what she did, could have lied, could have beaten her at Pon-Ifa perhaps…but he had blindly taken lives and she had preserved herself and her personal integrity through tragedy. She had taken that moment and used it to rise, to protect, to inspire even an organization like Cerberus to know they needed her.

He felt slightly worse. Relative genius and integrity was becoming a concern as well as guilt.

His protectiveness was becoming a deterrent to efficient gathering of information. He was accustomed to disgust being an outcome of his surveillance efforts, but usually with his target, not himself.

She reminded him uncomfortably of Kolyat, youth and defiant eyes.

He was inappropriately fiercely proud of her, having no right to it but being unable to suppress it. Perspective shifted now from the younger to the older, Fanning to Shepard, and he saw Cara now in focus. She was a more formidable woman than he had suspected, deserving more respect than he was accustomed to giving. She had found the bodies of her parents as he had found Irikah's. Too many things uncategorized and compared inappropriately. Too much shifting perspective and vertigo. She was associated now with an extraordinary family and not a Commander devoid of context.

He still wanted her, badly, paradoxically more, but as he had observed her vulnerable moments, it appeared his son, his wife and her parents observed him and found him obviously unworthy.

Had someone witnessed his reaction to encountering Irikah's body through remote investigation, he would want to kill them, would do so without thought or mercy. Cara would not wish the same, but the judgment of family and hypocrisy demanded that he deserved to die for being that witness.

He would die soon enough.

He turned his attention to what was less uncomfortable. Spectre Hemorus Orbestan had been born Hemorus Yiansoc. He did not inspire Thane to wish to protect him. Thane began to feel the stirrings of wishing to enforce respect from the man on Cara's behalf. Something he could certainly do. Orbestan's history was not unknown, merely obscure. Changes in identity were a common occurrence before transfer to the Cabal, and finding him was not difficult. There were witnesses, documentation. Garrus Vakarian had been instrumental in saving his life and arranging for surgery, rehabilitation and transfer.

The origin of the name Orbestan was unknown, but unlike Cara's case, irrelevant. Bare face meant no home clan, no expectation of being accepted to a clan, so his last name was meaningless.

He did not find Orbestan to be a mystery, not like Cara. The information was reassuringly cold and potentially of unambiguous value.

Any clan would take Orbestan now should he wish to petition to join, but he was notorious in Turian society and that would be out of established character. Gay, barefaced, biotic, celebrated and admired for maintaining these states without shame and with distinction by the more progressive Citadel social, political and professional circles, led into fashion by Garrus Vakarian's more cooperative style. Vakarian championed results and he got them. Orbestan embraced galactic life as an accomplished independent Turian, not the champion or embodiment of the values of Palaven. There were no traditional means by which he would ever gain clan paint through bond. Gay relationships were not recognized by Turian culture. Orbestan made his own culture and he had many adherents and admirers.

What was revealed with only a slight bit of digging was the anecdotal conclusion that he was in love with Garrus Vakarian.

Garrus Vakarian himself had only been of interest to Thane's investigation into Cara because of her association with him. Spectre Orbestan's dislike of Cara may be as simple as jealousy, and that would explain much. If Orbestan were in love with Garrus Vakarian, jealous and theoretically being assigned to watch over a human woman, repress his own Spectre authority and take her orders instead of continuing to serve at Vakarian's side…

Garrus Vakarian's preferences became more relevant to Thane's information gathering. There was a great deal of interest in whether or not Garrus Vakarian was bonded to Lal Shepard. High rewards posted in return for information that would lead to that conclusion or any other for that matter. The reason was not difficult to imagine. Power. Garrus Vakarian had it. Lal Shepard had it.

Thane had given little credence to the bonding rumor because it did not fit what he believed to be true of Turian devotion. If Garrus Vakarian bonded to Lal Shepard shortly after her return, why had he not returned to the Normandy with her? A bond mate was law and deep chemical redirection of a Turian's instincts toward protection of chosen mate.

Garrus Vakarian historically had been involved sexually with Turian partners casually during his military and C-Sec career. Was it possible he and Orbestan had been involved at some point? Orbestan had been injured when Vakarian had met him, classified critical and disabled, requiring extensive rehabilitation. Vakarian's movements were easily tracked through military biometrics. Visited daily, before witnesses, recorded. Orbestan had remained at Cabal training first as a student and then as a trainer, and none of their travel had been correlated, no missing time where their whereabouts were unknown. They had likely not met again until after Vakarian's service on the SR-1, at Vakarian's request.

So perhaps Orbestan had developed strong feelings and loyalty. Perhaps Garrus Vakarian had been who he seemed to be throughout his Councilorship; helpful, compassionate, discreet.

A social and professional relationship was built between Orbestan and Vakarian, but no sign of romantic or sexual involvement from either of them, the only pattern one of Orbestan seeking out Vakarian lovers that greatly resembled the Councilor. That habit had been established in Orbestan before he came to the Citadel. The phrase 'open secret' in this case was more open than secret. Orbestan kept his social life and his professional life separate. He did not appear to maintain relationships with his elite crew, but had multiple partners, all Vakarian, established in many ports. There was a spirit of competition more than secrecy. To extend that competition to a further open secret, Executor and then Councilor Vakarian had inspired a great deal of sexual and social speculation, pornography categories and highly paid specialists. It appeared Vakarian ignored that completely, in Orbestan if he knew, and in the general populace. Vakarian had been absent from any social engagements other than to press his political agendas. His political life was his life, he had no social life, only individual friends. He was helpful, compassionate and discreet. He inspired the cumulative despair of those wishing it were otherwise so he could perhaps be blackmailed or coerced, only to be faced with an honest man.

There was a history of persistent unfilled contracts for discovering where his weaknesses were and a general gnashing of teeth over his extensive ability to know things he should not know. There had been a purge of many C-Sec officers before and after his introduction to the post of Executor. It had cost many vengeful people access to negotiable authority.

The appearance of the strange markings on Vakarian's crest took on new significance. As Thane had little knowledge of the meaning of Clan colors, his had seemed unusual but not unlike other dual-toned Turians and their paint. It seemed however that the red was unique, not of Turian heraldry and placed at the time of Lal Shepard's death. Those who understood Turian culture better than Thane did expressed that this was Vakarian in essence taking Shepard's colors after her death.

Thane could not find an alternate explanation. That speculation throughout time had not altered, just as the contracts seeking Councilor Vakarian's weaknesses had not altered.

A dead woman was not a weakness, but a strength.

A live woman…

The only speculation personally involving Councilor Vakarian during the time of Shepard's absence had been those marks and their meaning, odd mementos in his office that he would not explain. His idolizing of Shepard had not been a Turian scandal, only a Turian disappointment to those who wished to get his attention and could not tear it from his single-minded pursuit of an agenda he credited to her inspiration.

Shepard had not been on the Citadel when Vakarian's bond was discovered or created, had she?

Once again Commander Shepard told nobody of her plans or her purposes. The Normandy had been at the Citadel. He no longer underestimated her capacity to lie.

Thane watched Councilor Vakarian's announcement of bond, with the caveat that it was a medical and not a social disclosure.

"Unfortunately at this time, announcing the woman I love to the worlds would be placing her in danger. I am proud and lucky to be bonded to her, but for her own safety I will not disclose who she is. She is my heart."

"I defer the social announcement to a later time where she and I can celebrate with family without cause for fear. I have more to hope for, more to live for, more to work for, with her promising to be at my side when she can, when it will be a celebration and not an invitation to more potential harm."

"There are people we love, those people are worth everything. For now I am lucky. I have more to fight for. I have the opportunity to be dedicated to the greater fight because I am in love."

Thane drew from Vakarian's voice and expression an undeniable echo of the faces of Cara's parents looking at each other. He did not doubt Vakarian's devotion. It all applied to Shepard, no need to lie. This was not the face or voice of a man who wished to lie. He was forced to conceal. An honest man in distress, wishing to claim his bond mate and speaking of the fight against Reapers and his own restrictive culture. Among Turians, this is why they insisted Vakarian must be bonded to Shepard. These words, this fervor and his medically verified bond could not be to a Turian woman. Not when another woman's colors adorned his crest.

It was the sense of Cara's capacity that made him consider reversing his judgment of bond determining Vakarian's path. Shepard would determine Vakarian's path. She would deny her parents for her own reasons. She would deny his bond for obviously otherwise speculated reasons. Were it to become known, the fight against Collectors and Reapers would lose the Council seat.

Vakarian would become bare faced.

Thane closed his eyes, imagining the reluctant restraint in Councilor Vakarian's eyes during his bond announcement. He doubted that Vakarian cared if he lost his Council seat. This man would be proudly bare faced for her, as he was proudly a friend of Orbestan's.

He imagined Vakarian being held at bay by a small finger held up like a wave upon the shore leaving behind words in silence.

He must consider.

He exercised and meditated, observing the uncomfortable sense of lack of balance or perspective with what he had learned, or partially learned. Invading the privacy of Commander Shepard was one concern. Where it led became a storm and not a proposed relationship with her. Not without the potential cost of his life for misstep. Not from Cara, but potentially from Vakarian, with Orbestan a willing weapon. If Thane's arm belonged to Shepard, Vakarian's arm belonged to Shepard and Orbestan's arm belonged to Vakarian. Investigating further in the unresolved mix of uncomfortable and unwelcome conclusions was another. He had known she was a child when he requested the surveillance of her be retrieved. He had not considered he would be emotionally affected, only that he would gain what he needed to know. Would he stop investigating because that child…because that child what?

Not because that child was smarter than you, because that child wished to protect a secret. You wished to protect her from everything but your own lust, and you have failed, and yet the edges of encroaching territoriality expand instead of contract. What you are feeling is guilt and the loss of the security of having nothing to lose and the security of your conclusion of something to be gained.

How would he determine whether or not Cara Fanning was in love with Councilor Vakarian when the waves were silent and on other shores? That was now the only question that mattered. Hinging upon that answer were all his potential actions or inactions.

Would he defy a Councilor and a Spectre for her? Without question.

Would he defy her possible love for an absent man?

He must consider.

He experienced greater guilt due to the fact that he would not stop, because pursuing what appeared to be a vulnerable and somewhat socially defenseless woman had greater dangers than her nonexistent wrath. To her. To him. To the mission.

He did find it easy to ultimately redirect his accumulated uneasiness into anger toward Spectre Orbestan. Regardless of Thane's questionable goals and methods, he had information and he did feel he must do something with it. If he did not wish to fail to protect Cara Fanning further, something must be done.

Amonkira make it so.


	17. Chapter 17

Thane's plans were disrupted by the information that Kolyat was on the Citadel. He had no reservations about telling Cara his concerns and the way he had left Kolyat after Irikah's death. Thane had been certain it was the best thing for his son's future to leave him in the care of Irikah's relatives. Any association with his son would draw down more vengeance. Kolyat's best protection was to be abandoned. After time had passed and the immediate threats to Kolyat's life had been eliminated, Thane faced a choice as to whether or not he would remain an assassin or become a father again. The answer was dictated by the way of the world. Thane would always be an assassin in the watchful eyes of the world in which he had moved for the majority of his life. Thane would always be either a potential target or a potential hire. Kolyat would be the only stable point in his life, the fulcrum on which Thane's will could be leveraged. They would be forced into flight and fear as a best case scenario, murdered like his mother in the darker outcomes. There would be no expiration of his identity as assassin, just as the people he killed would never return to life. Kolyat would always be a target. Thane instead chose the path of continued work until Kepral's or mission conditions took his life, hoping to not stain Kolyat's future as he had his past.

It appeared Kolyat did not wish to be abandoned or protected. Thane could not fathom Kolyat's motivation, Cara's suggestion that it was to connect to him horrifying. Kolyat should be like his mother. Kolyat had spent his life with his mother, and that should dictate how he entered adulthood.

Cara said "Thane, angry or desperate, this is love. This is a boy wanting to know his father. You not being there does not mean you were absent in his thoughts or in his heart. Maybe it's because he had so little of you that he wants more. Dancing crazy sounds like fun."

Thane had a flashing moment of seeing Irikah in front of a window in the kitchen in the morning, her skin and vibrant color washed with orange brightness as she made breakfast. Thane moved to her, his arm around her waist and his hand taking the spoon out of her hand. She put it down with a laugh, turned willingly and joyously to him, beautiful. Her laugh drew Kolyat's attention from the table where he sat near his mother, always near his mother, wanting to dance with them.

Thane had been up the entire night, an empty mug of tea set aside as light and dark merged and he studied his target until it was light again. Irikah never complained, never scolded, waited for him and welcomed him with her smile and the depth of her sunset and sunrise eyes.

Kolyat ran with the trusting enthusiasm only found in the bodies of small, loved boys and expected his father to catch him, which he did, swinging him up on his hip, one arm around his son and one around his wife. Beauty and joy and acceptance, the shadows scattering in the light, in the spin of Irikah putting her arm around his waist and adding her momentum. Thane could see both their faces, Kolyat's bent back and eyes closed, Irikah's laughing and even with his arm around her and hers around him, always as ephemeral as that laughter, unable to be truly grasped, only experienced.

They spun until Kolyat wanted to be put down on his feet to try to walk, the dizziness overwhelming but he wanted to be like his father, who never seemed to get dizzy.

Thane stepped back a small distance from her and put Kolyat down on his unsteady feet, Irikah reaching out her arms to catch him. Kolyat tried to take a step and veered, laughed and his mother's arms caught him in the same loved trust.

"Daddy, how come dancing doesn't make you crazy like me?"

"It does, Kolyat."

Kolyat wasn't satisfied with that answer, but Irikah was, her smile promising all the riches of her heart, of her body. He would find her when Kolyat took his nap and promise all the riches of his own heart and body…his Ree, as beautiful in the afternoon sun as in the morning sun or starlight or candle, her venom on his tongue and the ephemeral light that radiated from her as beautiful as her skin under his hands and her mouth…

He came back to the present. Thane was inclined to believe Kolyat had been coerced and was being used as bait, but he did not say that. It was not relevant to locating him.

Cara smiled her battle smile and reassured him by saying "I'll take care of it. I'll change course and we'll head to the Citadel immediately."

"Thank you, Siha." She knew what it meant. She had beaten him once again at Pon-Ifa and earned his answer. She shivered when he said it and her heart beat faster and he enjoyed those moments.

oOoOoOoOoOo

Cara had avoided the Citadel, but Kolyat's situation moved her to return. There was also a potential recruit named Kasumi Goto, another potential recruit recommended by Liara, Kiris T'Nauvat.

There was Garrus.

Garrus was every reason to go and to not go for Cara. Shepard had other concerns.

Her hacking was much better than it had been, and she wanted to…she wanted to test it out, but there were other ways.

Strategically this was a divergence point where the line between Shepard and Cara, Councilor and Garrus would blur further. She had to consider whether or not it was inherently pre-blurred and it was only her insistence on arbitrary boundaries that made it seem clearer. She could use the opportunity to scout real territory. Shepard had not asked Councilor Vakarian for anything outside the witnessed meeting between Liara, Orbestan and Anderson. She thought she knew the answer once she considered asking for a personal favor on Thane's behalf. It still…did technically advance the fight against Reapers, with Thane granting his arm in what she now knew to be literal and complete fashion. She could ask Garrus for something he could do very easily with minimal cost, or she could delay, risk Kolyat's life and his target's life because she was…what? Independent? Skittish? Deluded?

Likely all that plus stubborn.

She bit her lip, pacing in her quarters.

"He's my bond mate. He wants to be my bond mate, Top. He wants to help. If I know he would want to help, not just because I feel it, but because he has insisted….and that excluding him would make me know he was excluded…and if it were found out he would DEFINITELY feel excluded…yeah, I could hack in, but what if I just…asked? This is his Citadel. I mean, I'm sneaky but…what Prow?"

Prow was the Turian cruiser. Spoke for Garrus often. She had offered him a new paint job in his chosen colors but he had declined. That seemed somewhat insulting but she'd respect his wishes.

"Yeah. His Citadel. What I'm asking isn't illegal, though it might be if I didn't ask. Maybe not, I'm still a Spectre. What I'm asking is…a Spectre prerogative. Isn't it? There can't be that many Drell on the Citadel. If I access systems I could find Kolyat, track his movements through biometrics and facial recognition. Even easier to track him through his Extranet use. I could…use my back door and get in myself but…"

"If I ask Garrus for a contact in C-Sec, he's going to tell me he'll handle it himself. He'd want to. It's for me. He'd insist. Insult him by bypassing him somewhat illegally, definitely guiltily and doing something he'd want to do for me…or…"

"Yeah, it's a favor. A personal favor. Is that completely unreasonable between a Councilor and a Spectre? I bet Russ gets favors…Liara can just ring him up whenever. It's a friendship. So I'm a Spectre, a friend and a bond mate, and this is…friendly Spectre bond? It's not like he's going to demand sex for saving a young boy's life. I'm getting sidetracked on him demanding sex and how good that sounds. Give me a minute. Oh. Okay, deep breath. Even if we weren't involved, I'd ask anybody I knew that I could trust for this information. I might ask Anderson. No, scratch that, I'd definitely do it myself. Anderson doesn't know C-Sec systems. Oh, I don't know. Garrus is the most secure and the most likely. Even if I approached someone in C-Sec independently… explaining becomes… problematic."

"Lives at risk, Kolyat's and his target's, I'm not there and I don't have access. Garrus is and he does. There's really no choice. Time and discretion are the key factors. I hope this does not bite me in the justifications later."

She bit the back of her thumb "Mom, what do you do when you love someone so much and you want to give them everything but you need to take?"

That's what love is, Cara.

"You know, that isn't helpful at all. Could you maybe provide a chart? Something more 'if/then' than 'if…' in some poetic stall? I don't think you know either."

She knows.

"You're biased, Dad. That's it, I'm baking. I am. I'm going to complain again that mass effect stoves do not produce proper browning. No Maillard reaction. Changes the texture and the flavor. I need a real oven. There's no crust on the brownies. I can bury the tarts in sugar…well, okay, yeah, problem solved. A blurry relationship is better than a bad one. A non-crusty brownie…ew. That sounds wrong."

She decided to call Garrus and tell him, ask, bask in Turian approval and love. "Hi, I love you."

"Hi, I love you too."

"I'm coming back to the Citadel."

He smiled and she could hear a slight Turian subvocal purring, which made her smile and blush as he said "Tell me when and how long, I'll find a way. Make it soon and for a while."

"I wanted to ask your advice about a favor. It's about mission, love, friendship and family."

"I'll try to be wise and enlightening."

"Oh, thank you, I need that. I need you. So Thane Krios has a problem and I want to help. His son is on the Citadel and considering assassination as a career path. He thinks his father is dead and I think this is him trying to connect to his father's life path. They have a complicated history, no contact for years. I want this kept as quiet as possible for Thane's safety and to protect Kolyat from becoming a target or making further…desperate choices."

"He's here?"

"That's what I need to know. Here's where the advice comes in. So…I'm your bond mate, but that doesn't grant me Councilor access privileges."

"Oh yes it does."

"Yeah, but it shouldn't."

"But it does. I insist."

"I would do my hacking thing, and I am sure I will at some point…but what if I get caught? What if I'm too late? What if Kolyat finds his target before I reach the Citadel? What if I could have asked you and two lives are saved and a third is granted peace? What if I deny you the opportunity to be my hero…again? What if my bond mate has to break me out of prison and then asks a simple 'why didn't you ask me?' and then I have no answer and I look dumb while in prison and he considers leaving me there for the crime of dumb?"

"Fortunately Councilor and Spectre privileges also get you out of prison. Not without a lecture."

"I don't like looking dumb, Garrus."

"Then you have the wrong face. You stall and you squeak. I'm not saying you ARE dumb, but you are so very good at looking that way."

"I wish I could argue with that. Now I look dumb about being dumb."

"I'll find him. I'll speak to him. Not arrest, just a chat. I'll tell him that his father is helping with the fight against Reapers and regrets that he can't be there, but will be there soon."

"They're not on the best of terms."

"I think I can navigate a distant parental relationship. I think all he'll be thinking is 'Holy crap, it's the Councilor' but if you think he's going to get rowdy…"

"Did I just accuse you of being dumb?"

"You do it all the time."

"I don't mean it."

"Yes, you do." Teasing.

"You could use biometrics and I bet he didn't know enough to alter or disable his Extranet connection, he should be listed as Kolyat Krios. Here's his info."

"I know, Limayeth. I have been doing this for a little while. It won't be hard to find a Drell on the Citadel, there are about four of them here at any given time."

"Just trying to help! Hey, do you know Kiris T'Nauvat?"

"She's good."

"Think she'd work well with me?"

"She should, yes. Going to pick her up too?"

"Yes. In theory. Hopefully she won't be actively skinning puppies when I meet her."

"Does that happen often?"

"Seems that way."

"Does Krios skin puppies?"

"What? No. He killed Nassana Dantius. You know how much she had it coming. It was awesome. You should have been there." She winced with an internal 'oops' of giant proportions. Blur if not eliminate the lines of duty and love, rub in your insistence on separation, why don't you? She got so…so…comfortable with him. Once again, do not explain the glow factor.

"I should have been there." Not angry. Not hurt. The voice of missed firsts.

"I'm sorry…" She meant it.

He was teasing, conciliatory "No you're not. It's okay. Stop looking like you're going to commit suicide with that spoon. It's upsetting."

"I am sorry." She still meant it.

"It's all right, Limayeth. I just want to know that you're safe."

Safe. There was silence, both sorting through reassurances and responses that might harmonize with and then resolve the sour note.

She said "Thane Krios is frightening as a person. He's the most likely person to figure out that you and I are involved, but now I don't think he'd use that to hurt me. He's working for free. He doesn't seem to be a petty person. He's also the most likely person to keep me alive because he's that good. He doesn't miss anything."

"What about Russ?"

"Russ…he's incredible. You already know about Russ."

"Yeah…but he's not the most likely person to keep you alive?"

"Maybe that wasn't the best phrasing."

"Maybe it was." Too much concern in his voice. More potential oops.

"He's good, Garrus, I just gave him a bad day. You know bad days."

"Oooooh. Yeah. I do. Krios didn't have a bad day?"

"No. I am convinced only other people get bad days around Thane."

"But not you?"

"No, not me. He listens to me talk about stupid stuff."

"It's not stupid. I miss hearing you explain tingerbops."

"That's not a real thing."

"But you're going to look it up as soon as I hang up just to make sure."

"You're mean. And that's sweet…but you kind of have to listen because you're my bond mate. He talks to me. He listens. It's like I have a friend. I'd help him anyway, but yes safe and no, no bad days. He's kind. He's polite. He's terrifying but I need that."

"I'm impressed. Everyone gets at least one bad day."

"Yours wasn't so bad."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"The look on your face…"

"I DON'T want to talk about it."

"All right."

"I should be there for your days, Limayeth, all of them, good and bad."

"I agree. I just can't arrange that without a terminally tragic helping of extra death, betrayal and failure. So think about it this way. I'm not afraid of Thane, not now. He is dying from Kepral's syndrome, he's dedicated his life to this mission at my order and that's an absolute bond, it seems. He identifies himself as my weapon. I don't want him to give his life potentially on this mission, missing the opportunity to save his son from meaningless death. That's hopefully what I do, less death, more trust and success."

"That's hopefully what we do. I'm sorry to hear he's ill. Whatever I can do to help."

"Thank you, Holy-Crap-It's-The-Councilor."

"Is that my new name?"

"I'm trying it out."

"Think you could you say that after I kiss you hello?"

"Think I'll be able to?"

"Not when I'm done."

"I miss you so much."

"I will see you soon, Limayeth, and I will miss you until then."

oOoOoOoOoOo

Garrus had found Kolyat at a rented hotel room within two hours. He hadn't altered his Extranet identifiers at all. Garrus went to the hotel room and knocked on the door, a startled and sleepy Drell on the other side.

"My name is Garrus Vakarian. May I have a moment of your time?"

Kolyat Krios stared. Garrus was used to that. He gave him a moment and almost smiled at 'Holy-Crap-It's-The-Councilor' face.

Kolyat stuttered and ushered him inside. "Councilor Vakarian, I –"

If Garrus was going to do this, he was going all the way. "Please, call me Garrus."

"I couldn't…"

"Yes, you could. You don't know it, but I owe your father a debt."

"My father?"

"Yes. I am here on his behalf. He is alive, he wants you to know that, he wants you to meet, and he is on his way to the Citadel."

Kolyat's mouth twisted, seemingly caught between anger at his father and the fact that a Councilor was in his hotel room. Garrus continued "He has been helping with the fight against Reapers. The Council has kept him very busy and he has not contacted you because…well, frankly, it was a condition of his employment. He did not wish to put you at risk."

Kolyat stared.

Garrus said with an air of intentional mystery, hoping the kid would feel watched every day of his life because he clearly needed to feel that way "It came to our attention that you are considering a career change."

Kolyat stopped staring and started looking terribly nervous.

Garrus held up a hand "I am not here to arrest you. I am here to ask you, as a courtesy, to reconsider your career path and agree to meet with your father. I apologize officially on behalf of the Council that he has been absent from your life. Your father has more than earned a pre-emptive pardon for his son and also any support you require. We can provide you with a stipend as your father has more than earned that as well. You should be proud of him. I can't tell you how or why." No, really, I can't, I have no idea. I just have to take her word for it.

Kolyat stood, stunned and Garrus waited with stern on his face until Kolyat said "Okay. I mean…thank you, Councilor Vakarian."

"Garrus."

"…Garrus." The kid looked like he was about to faint. Mission Terrify A Teenager was complete and Garrus left solemnly and then tried not to laugh and failed on the way back to the tower. C-Sec would arrange for identity change, stipend and lodging on the Council's authorization. Listed technically as confidential informant. Kolyat Krios would not have to do a damned thing except get used to his new circumstances and be under surveillance until his father arrived.

Garrus contacted Cara "Okay, it's done. Found Kolyat. He did not say much but he was very impressed that his father has been working for the Council for years and is a hero. I got him an apartment, an identity change and a stipend for his father's service."

"Have I mentioned that I love you…so very much?"

"Say it again."

"I love you…so very much."

"See how good things are when I help?"

"I do. I really do."

oOoOoOoOoOo

Thane woke to a notification of someone at the door of his quarters, rose and dressed quickly, answered the door to Cara.

"Kolyat is safe. I asked Councilor Vakarian to find him, contact him, dissuade him from his intended new career. He has agreed to an identity change, he's listed as a confidential informant in C-Sec rolls, which means he has a stipend and an apartment. Nobody other than Garrus knows why. Kolyat hadn't done anything actionable yet. Don't be surprised that he is under the impression that you have been working for the Council against Reapers for many a year, that you insisted on not contacting Kolyat to protect him, and that Councilor Vakarian is indebted to you personally for your service. Garrus gave Kolyat his direct contact information in case he needs anything, and Garrus will look after him. He's under surveillance until you get there, just to make sure he does not panic or run or do any of the things teenagers do when something weird just happened. You can see him when we put in. I'm sorry for interrupting your sleep, but just in case you were worried, I wanted to make sure you could rest easier."

Thane listened, stunned. It had taken four hours to save his son's life and possibly save his opportunity to be a father again in any capacity.

Power.

Siha.

He swallowed once, hard, looked into smiling green and wanted to pull her into his arms in an exhale of a long-held breath, tangle his fingers in her hair, hold her for long reverent moments before sweeping her off her feet and showing her with his body the meaning of devotion.

His arms tensed and he nearly began that desired Path in that moment.

Something about the way the word 'Garrus' played on her lips and in her eyes, the fact that he now owed Garrus Vakarian a debt that could never be repaid, and that the moment was not his, restrained him.

The gratitude was his, but not the triumph. That danced in green, conspiratorial success, and conspiratorial with another man. The tension in his arms turned to pain and he said "Thank you, Siha."

Her smile was casual, pleased, and missed any tension or expression that might escape from his Spirit into his face. "You're welcome. Good night."


	18. Chapter 18

Kasumi Goto was as easy to recruit as Kaidan had been. All Lal had to do was say hello. She had no real reason to object to Kasumi's skill set, and her known targets seemed to all be terrible people. No idea what the woman was like in a fight, but auditions would be ongoing.

Kiris T'Nauvat was also easy. Not talkative. She was an Asari Commando, had worked with Liara. She volunteered and asked Liara to make an introduction and if more people did that…Lal would be very grateful.

Mordin had stated that he believed his seeker deterrent was ready for testing, and that meant a serious first shot at a mission, so she needed to study her options.

Garrus did find a way for them to meet, a time consuming shell game of her checking into one place, with a body double already inside who theoretically stayed inside and ordered room service while she went to another place, providing proof that Commander Shepard left where she entered. Back exit, shuttlecraft, hood and mask, all very serious. It was tiring and a reminder of the stupid fight instead of the real fight, she wanted to get to access to room service herself. She would avoid creating a pattern even in room service, she wouldn't develop favorites, she'd seek out variety. She didn't answer the door, paid with an anonymous credit identity Garrus provided and there was an entry alcove where the food was left. That part was fine, not encountering people a plus.

It would be really, really nice if she had a place of her own someday, but a stable location where she could be found on the Citadel was not a good idea. As much as she would love a home base, it would be politically unpleasant. Reporters would find her. She'd want a sanctuary and she'd have a siege. She'd resisted Garrus getting her an apartment or even getting one herself because territory meant territoriality issues. The Citadel needed to remain his. The Normandy needed to remain hers. She wouldn't be going to the tower again except on official business as she had in her Spectre career, wouldn't be visiting his apartment. Commander Shepard would stay at anonymous, boring and unpredictable places on the Citadel and would not be going out. That was her original pattern established after Saren and during her review period, she'd stick with it.

She settled in with food and studied the intricacies of Terminus Systems law…or lack thereof. Mostly lack. There wasn't much she could do about that, no way she could call on the Council, would have to separately deal with Alliance, Hierarchy and Thessia to see if she could get support voluntarily.

So far she and Orbestan had an expensive détente. She wasn't really worried much about the Normandy being controlled by Cerberus any longer. She didn't need his backup in a caution sense. She would need it in a force sense when they began her push into Collector territory. In theory she could ask Orbestan to roll out his crew and he would. So for now she did have two ships, two teams, and people she could count on. Whatever Orbestan's problem with her, it did not extend to refusing to fight. Orbestan's crew was mainly Turian with a few Asari, and there was no reason for Lal to object to any of them. She had done her research. Impressive people, all of them. She hadn't met them…and she did believe Orbestan wanted it that way, and she would respect that. What mattered is that he came with a crew that followed his orders and got things done. If they were bored at the moment…that was the nature of the military. Hurry up and wait. She needed to do it right, not fast.

She did wish she could do it right and fast, but telling Orbestan that would likely not result in any level of accord.

She was…feeling much better, steadier, less lonely, less terrified, at least as Cara. She felt steadier on her feet as Shepard, and having Thane with her on the ship was good for her confidence. Having Kolyat rescued made Thane seem so much less of a threat in terms of figuring out that she and Garrus were together…or partially…okay, Garrus was together and she was a bit of a flake, but still…potentially together.

Potential and kinetic kissing…

She focused again, read, chewed on the cuff of her shirt, and fell asleep partway through Terminus section 54.31.a7 having to do with legal establishment of corporate entities that would accept responsibility for...

oOoOoOoOoOo

Garrus had done some work in gradually altering the patterns of his life. Despite his insistence on staying with and being with Cara, he knew intellectually that he couldn't. He just did not emotionally…or physically…get it, but if he vacated his position the Citadel would start to metaphorically wobble on her axis and then begin to shake apart as a resource. He didn't grant himself that much importance, but he did grant all the information Cara had given him to be that important.

He had slowly gouged away the barnacled parasitic crust of corruption that clung to every surface of the Citadel, some of them in jail, many of them now in other places looking to get a new foothold. He had years of relationships and trust, and he had built on what Cara had given him with Liara's help and days that turned into weeks that turned into months that turned into years of relentless pursuit. Not the way Garrus Vakarian would have done it years ago, but the way Lal Shepard had tried to teach him was possible. He wasn't as fast as she was, wasn't as much in the way of a lightning calculator of factors, but she had and did inspire him to consider more factors than he would have on his own.

Her concerns about alteration of patterns had caused him to ease up on and alter his schedule just slightly. Small ways. Predictability in Turians was an ideal, so it took some discipline to be undisciplined. She had explained that change should be an evolution of a pattern, not a cataclysmic change. So he spent just slightly less predictable time in his office, spent more privately, even went out socially. He developed a pattern of the beginnings of a social life without her. He did not like it in the least, but he saw its necessity. He worked occasionally from home instead of the tower. He canceled appointments and became just slightly unreliable for no particular reason that could be discovered. He didn't like doing it. At all. He could get so much more done from his offices, spending irritated time making himself not early, which meant getting ready at his usual time and then waiting impatiently like a…well, like a Turian.

He could not yet bring himself to actually be late and the appointments he canceled were most often the ones he did not wish to attend anyway. There was a lot to his job he did not like, but he had learned to listen. Minutia had nostalgic importance in his life. It wasn't the same as it would be listening to her, with his smile and slight bewilderment as she paced and expounded, but it was a bit like listening to a Salarian discuss one more research program…no, it wasn't, not even a little, so he thought about her during those droning experiences.

He thought about her and couldn't stop thinking about her. He still couldn't bring himself to stop working. It was the best defense against the biting urge to take a shuttle directly to her. If she knew he needed to do his job, then doing his job was what she needed and it eased the separation ache he felt when he had no purpose at all. Turian schedules were different from humans, who needed about 8 hours of sleep. He needed 4. A Citadel day was 20 hours. Before her return he had worked a near nonstop schedule of 14 hour days, 6 hours off, one hour before work, one hour after, four hours of sleep. Now he'd changed that to only slightly less predictable. He had begun to take days off. In reality he worked from home, but he was listed as unavailable. He forced himself to be unavailable. If he wanted to spend a full day with her, he needed to establish that it was his habit to take full days off when the Normandy was not docked. He took 8 hours off, and he could spend those with her. She would be on a completely different schedule with a 24 hour day, 8 hours of sleep theoretically, though her varying sleep levels didn't seem to affect her manic focus. He knew her schedule, but had to adhere to his. He could not drop everything when she landed, but he wanted to, tortuous minutes ticking by.

He'd worked as usual. She'd been on the Citadel for seven hours now and his blood was seething, hide crawling with the imperative to get to her.

He was paralyzed along other avenues that ached. Bringing her a brownie had been near heartbreaking disaster. She had nothing and he could not give her anything because of the pattern of his life, of hers, of dextro and amino and not being observed purchasing human things. She had no place to stay but had declined an apartment because it would be traced back to him and she did not want to have a stable address on the Citadel where they would be tempted to meet. Any apartment he got for her would lie abandoned and she would feel…guilty and…

He heard her voice and it had been revealing of so much "Because I couldn't claim it as ours. I'm waiting until it can be ours."

Ironically she gave him in her waiting something distinctly her…the promise of everything. She was not taking this casually. She was not holding him off in favor of someone else. It was very…Shepard…and as usual he did not fully understand. He heard it in the echoes of her looming pronouncements. Some of it he understood, but some of it was an impenetrable network of delicate Cara things that made no sense. He had to have faith in her reasoning in the intricate web when what he really had was a sword ready to cut through them all.

Nice phallic reference, Vakarian. Get it together before you touch her.

It wasn't his cock that was the problem, thankfully. He could restrain himself because it was her, and because she asked, and because she would…well…Turians didn't kiss. She kissed. And despite all the Shepard myth…he was terrified he was going to kill her. She hadn't had sex…at all…she was supposed to know about her body and tell him…and if she was telling him she couldn't, he believed her.

As long as she kissed him. As long as he was able to share Reverie and silences, her scent telling him things he could not ask and she could not tell. That's how it felt, perfect. Reverie dissolved questions and concerns. She was physically and emotionally and mentally different enough from any other partner he'd had that he respected the fact that he had given her no choice and with no sexual history there may be no sexual future.

Before her death he had only been considering the possibility. He could barely get her to sit in a room and meet his eyes after hours of coercion and threats to helpless and hostage liquids. She had been a mystery. After her death it was unthinkable to consider in depth what might have been. After his bond…he had done some research. All terrifying. For a Turian he was large to begin with, for a human she was tiny. If Reverie caused her to feel no pain and he tore her…

Terrifying.

He thought maybe she wasn't willing to try until the war was over because it would in fact kill her. He didn't doubt she'd still do it. He imagined falling asleep with his finally-granted bond mate as she bled to death from internal hemorrhage and that was a very effective deterrent from progression.

Turian males and human females had sex, he'd seen that too. It was not in the least reassuring and tended to accentuate the bleeding aspect. That would not be him. That would not be her. That would not be them.

So here he was, empty handed, in a nameless and hidden location, wanting everything from a woman who idealized that state. He wanted to take as much as he could and stop only a millimeter from wherever her seemingly arbitrary border was for that day. She wanted to hold onto everything until she could give it to him all at once and never take it away from him.

Never take it away from him. That's what she wanted. Paradoxically he wondered if he loved her more for it or if he just didn't have a choice between loving her more every day. But there was an end to chemistry, he knew. He had fallen in love with her without bond, while she was alive and every day she was dead, and he was not sorry he had chosen her. She had never retracted that he knew her well enough to love her, to deserve her truths.

And maybe he could not be inside her, ever…but there were hands…and mouths…and he would really…enjoy…finding out what made her come.

Okay, maybe he'd learned, or at least learned enough to ask some interesting questions from human porn.

She wanted him, needed him, asked for his help…it was more than enough.

But Spirits help him if he did not want to find her in her invariably asleep, mesmerizing purity, shred the clothes from her body with a perfectly controlled talon, find out what the texture of her eternally-hard-in-his-presence nipples tasted like under his tongue. He wanted to kiss her until she was down, until it wasn't just that he was hers, but that she was unquestionably his, and whatever boundaries on her body she set, he wanted to obliterate them with his tongue, with his careful fingers, and listen to her as her exquisitely delicate body arched as he tasted her.

And now his cock was a problem.

He waited in the shuttle while he struggled with his plates, thought about the work day tomorrow, dragging himself away from her, Salarian lectures, not that she's right through that door.

Turian human porn did the trick again, recalling the expressions on the faces of women because they were denied Reverie to make it painful. That seemed to be the draw as the camera always included her face.

He tried to imagine Cara's face in pain and…fuck, fuck…oh fuck…don't be that guy. It wasn't that he wanted her in pain, it was just that she was so fucking beautiful and there was always pain in Turian sex. There was clearly pain in human sex. Her face like that, yes, he wanted to make her look like that and then he wanted to take it all away and…fuck. He gripped his seat, talons digging into the metal where the upholstery ended. Oh, fuck, that was the wrong thing to think.

Too late on that train of thought, plates wide and cock insistent, blood pounding and talons calling a screech from distressed metal, teeth angled against each other as images of how to make her FEEL something for his body rampaged through his careful and ineffective intellectual barriers. Fuck yes, her pale skin exposed to him, if she wanted silence he could make a gag, small breasts barely filling the natural arch of his palm, he imagined that perfect fit, hard nipples finally in his hands, burning points of sensation for both. A bite to the side of her throat without Reverie because that's what he needed, her face in pain, but only just enough pain, promises whispered in her ear, every possibility of her body open. Now in his fantasy there was a mirror so he could stand behind her and watch, melting green eyes and pale thighs open to his hand, held apart by his feet, her so small that her head fell to one side of his sternum blade, her shoulder barely up to the base of it.

He was ephemerally jealous for a moment of humans, about the idea that he could masturbate and he wouldn't be hard, but he couldn't manage that for more than a moment. He was too Turian, the open vulnerable sense of plates open a pleasure in itself, and he'd better get this out of his system. When he was with her, this wouldn't happen, even with her body pressed to him because it was what she wanted, what she needed and he would be kissing her, Reverie its own pleasure.

But, fuck, he did love seeing her face dazed and Reverie drunk, but he would love even more to have her WANT to have her face seen in pain, or with a gag, or pressed against his sternum blade with his cock riding the channel of her spine.

Someday, Cara, I promise. I'm getting a mirror and the gag's fucking optional, but I will have…everything I want…and so will you.

He had made a lot of promises to her that she had no idea existed.

But she would.

She did promise him everything…

He let the searing images fade, elaborated just a little more on them, on the muffled sounds she'd make. Well that answers whether or not I'm that guy. He breathed through his nose in hard pants until he adapted to the idea that she was just through that door, and he could trade lust with no end for gentler Reverie and her mouth, her scent, and the known fact that he would never, ever hurt her unless or until she wanted it.

Yes, he'd seen her injured critically and when she had been in more pain than he could voluntarily inflict, but it didn't matter. That was Shepard, and the woman waiting for him was Cara…whatever her name was. Damn.

He didn't know the floor plan but assumed he would find her in whatever living area there was with a couch, and he did. She was chewing on her cuff, or had been and was now mostly drooling on it and he smiled.

He had no luggage, brought only himself, shrugged off that he brought nothing but empty hands and so far empty fantasies, but accustomed himself to shared Cara space, which had different rules, same way that there were careful protocols for working in a vacuum.

He pulled her arm away from her mouth, and she made a soft protest, his smile deepened. He twined her fingers in his, contrast and size always a mundane marvel. He knelt down by the side of the couch and trailed the fingers of his other hand through her hair, until she turned toward that hand in her sleep and said "Mmmmm…" and he was lost. She opened her eyes and looked at him and her smile made him sure he made her FEEL for him.

No doubts as she scrambled up on her knees, took his face between her hands and kissed him. He stood and lifted her up with him for the excuse to have her suspended in his arms, held as though she were nothing, cherished as though she were everything. He didn't need words or fantasies or thoughts, the warm welcome of Reverie took them both. They'd spoken every day. He had no questions that couldn't be asked later. He would, he had some, about Russ and about Thane and about her careful reassurances that could be misdirection, but not right now. When he felt he might be causing her ribs to crack from his holding her, he lowered them to the couch with him in a sitting position, then lying down, his sternum blade retracted so she could lie flat against him, the ridge between her breasts, her height compensated for She could kiss to her Reverie-soaked content and his, her mouth on his hide, her fingers on the base of his fringe, and his hands on her waist, her back, her hair, and they were perfect together.

oOoOoOoOoOo

Thane had considered his options regarding Cara and Spectre Orbestan, carefully weighed them and chose a preliminary course of action that was volatile but he believed necessary. Thane had become convinced Orbestan was devoted to Vakarian. He'd become further convinced of Vakarian's character as being who he seemed to be, an honorable man, a good man. Thane had few ways to motivate Orbestan, but he was concerned that if Orbestan 'disapproved' once more within Cara's hearing or vision he would possibly do physical harm to the Turian.

Thane waited outside the Normandy's airlock until Orbestan left the ship "If you please, Spectre Orbestan. I would like a word."

Russ pulled up, stiff and suspicious, eyes narrowed and arms over his chest. He did not say yes. He had had about enough of the Drell and Shepard and they could both go fuck themselves. Or each other. He did not care, but he did not want to hear about it.

Thane waited for the polite acknowledgement of civil conversation but never got it, so continued smoothly "I would prefer to speak here where we have little chance of being overheard. I am concerned about your integration into the squad dynamics on the Normandy. You are accustomed to your own command and perhaps are not suited to following another Spectre's orders. Perhaps you should take the opportunity to leave the mission before you compromise it."

Russ's immediate reaction was to laugh "I am here on Councilor orders and it isn't up to you to decide what my mission is."

"You could perhaps assure Councilor Vakarian that your presence is no longer needed on the Normandy. You could also opt to shadow us from your own ship."

"And then you and Commander Fucking Shepard can do whatever you want without Garrus hearing about it, is that the concern? Don't worry, I'm not about to tell him that Commander Shepard is warming up to fucking someone who is likely to slit her throat for the cash once he gets tired of her."

"Your assessment of my character is of no interest to me, but your attitude toward your commanding officer is. I will give you one warning to moderate your behavior and language regarding Commander Shepard or I will not consult you regarding your removal from the Normandy." Thane's voice and eyes hardened and Russ was…impressed. Not many things impressed him. He was…impressed at being impressed. Damn. The plate at the back of his neck tightened in an atavistic tingle.

Russ moved his hands down to his sides, talons out, very carefully not exhibiting overt biotic flare, but obviously threatening. He was penned in. He couldn't explain why he was so pissed off, but he was definitely curious about the 'removal' part. He drawled with as much contempt as possible "Really. Already tired of me and ready to slit my throat? How much am I worth?"

"At the moment, you represent a negative value that impacts the mission and Commander Shepard's ability to complete it. That is sufficient for me to take action. If you are curious, there are several things an assassin accustomed to slitting throats could do. Many of these things may be set up to occur in a cascade if you attempt to do me any harm or question Commander Shepard's authority again. You are in love with Councilor Vakarian and have been for the entirety of your adult life, since changing your name from Yiansoc."

Russ's spine went cold, his subvocals began a threatening growl but the Drell gave no sign of hearing it as he continued after a moment of allowing that statement to sink in. Russ didn't try to deny it. Thane continued "I do not like or dislike you, but I do find your behavior an obstacle to completion of a task I am committed to, and your treatment of Commander Shepard abhorrent and beneath you. I will warn you once as a courtesy that you do not understand the circumstances in which you find yourself, and your behavior is something that would shame you if you understood. I cannot enlighten you, but I will make it my concern to make you pay for your unwillingness to behave as an enlightened person."

Russ gritted his teeth, points digging into opposing gums and the taste of blood making him want to shred Krios into gore and strips of skin. Thane continued in contrast, cool and quiet "Be assured this is not personal, but as impersonal as possible in execution of disrupting what you hold dear if you do not either leave the Normandy or grant Commander Shepard the respect and service she deserves according to my definition and not yours, not even hers. She tolerates your disrespect likely based on your relationship with Vakarian because she respects you both and that is her nature. That encourages you to exhibit more disrespect as it goes unchecked. I might applaud your taste in men as a side note, but I am not averse to using the information I have gathered against you in several ways. Councilor Vakarian's political position becomes more and more precarious. If a rumor from a credible source were to circulate that Spectre Orbestan was the person Councilor Vakarian bonded to in secret, it would provide a distraction from the rumor that he is bonded to Commander Shepard."

Another dramatic pause, involuntary blue flare from Russ's hands that Thane ignored, either unconcerned about Russ's reaction or willing to allow that cascade to take place. Russ didn't consider for a moment that this was about respect. It was about the Drell being able to control him. Thane blinked once with double lids and resumed after his pause "It would certainly result in Councilor Vakarian being inundated with accounts of your liaisons with Vakarian men through the press. It would likely result in your removal from the Normandy in several possible ways, even voluntary to avoid further damage by association. The most damage would be done to your relationship with Councilor Vakarian. Likely irreparable. The rumor could be disproven but not until after the damage to what you care about most is done."

The blue faded from Russ and he felt the solid trap close. He could leave. He could leave right now. One look at the assassin and he knew he wouldn't. The Drell knew he wouldn't. It was just an option in a fucked up shell game that meant he had one choice. Kiss up, fall in line or do the opposite of what he needed to do here, preserve Garrus's options, keep him informed and keep his cold bitch of a bond mate alive whether she deserve it or not, spending her free time with a bloodless Drell assassin in his quarters or in exclusive conversation in the galley every day.

He hadn't said a damned word to Garrus, what could he say?

Thane watched him carefully and waited for Russ's eyes to clear, for his attention to return to him fully "The mission would continue without the distraction you pose. You present an obstacle to Commander Shepard's authority and a personal target that I am concerned I would at some point need to physically restrain, perhaps kill because I would be required to enforce her will where she would be hesitant based on you being a friend of Vakarian's. I am asking you to do the job you are capable of doing, the job you promised to do. You are a good man, Spectre Orbestan. I am reminding you of that, and informing you that I am not. I have taken it upon myself to ask for the respect and support she should receive in light of her service and record and the terms of you having the honor to serve on the Normandy. If you will not give it, I will collect in other ways. The effort of respecting a woman who deserves it will be less than managing the damage I can do to your life if I am displeased. Any strike you aim against Commander Shepard will be felt by Garrus Vakarian tenfold. Here I see no value in proportional response. I seek an absolute." Thane would never start that rumor, because it would destabilize both Cara's and Vakarian's positions in the backlash and would distress them both. Garrus Vakarian was not a fool, he likely knew Orbestan was in love with him, yet he still assigned him to the Normandy at Cara's side, and Vakarian would have done that in good faith, not in an effort to harm either of them. If Orbestan would not respect either Vakarian's direction to watch her or Cara's authority, Thane would intervene to enforce both directives. Orbestan believed Thane to be without morals, therefore this would be a credible threat from his point of view. Orbestan had few options. Confront Vakarian and he would be removed from the ship because Vakarian would realize Orbestan was too much in love with him to follow his Avah. Confront Cara and be faced with voluntary discharge from duty without explanation. Thane needed a muzzle on Orbestan's tendency to question Cara's authority. Threaten Orbestan directly and nothing would result from that. Threaten Vakarian…and Orbestan would wear that muzzle willingly.

In reality if the threat were made, Thane imagined Vakarian would weather the accusation of being loved by Orbestan by restating his devotion to his friend and moving on.

Orbestan, however, did not know that, and each interview with his past and current lovers weighed heavy on his mind as intended.

As it would not happen it need not be considered. All Orbestan need do is imagine the damage done to Vakarian's position and it would be sufficient motivation for him to reconsider his attitude.

If he did not try to kill Thane immediately for making the threat…but Orbestan was a good man, and killing Thane was not that easy and would in theory create a cascade of thoughtfully damaging actions.

Russ thought very carefully, relaxed his hands, let the blue fade, wiped blood from his jaw, glared at the Drell, who seemed to regard Russ as he would a flower arrangement.

Russ wanted to ask a lot of questions but could not, either to protect Garrus or protect what he already knew about Garrus and Shepard that the Drell either didn't know or pretended not to know. There was no fucking doubt that if he'd researched Russ that well…he knew about Shepard and Garrus.

Russ had a disorienting twinge that came from the Drell's use of social distraction. Was the big bad evil Drell…being used by Shepard to be a distraction? What the fuck was going ON here? He couldn't ask Garrus. He could only protect him. He didn't believe that this was about 'caring' for Shepard. Caring wasn't in this…evil fucking Thing… watching him with disinterested eyes while discussing casually eviscerating everything he'd lived for while destabilizing government because Russ wasn't fucking NICE?

Russ also wanted to point out that Thane didn't smell like Shepard either, and none of this shit made any sense. How did that bitch manage this? Did she have some sort of fucking pheromone or was she using Thane to get what she wanted, asking him to make these threats? They weren't fucking, and Russ knew it, because maybe humans or Drell don't know that sex gets in the blood, in the skin, and not just the clothes.

Russ said slowly "All right. I'll do my job. She'll have my surface respect, something you had to threaten from me, not something she's earned."

Thane inclined his head "You are incorrect. She has earned it. Provide obedience or the appearance of obedience, but I will be watching and my terms are not as forgiving as hers."

Russ drawled "You don't mind that I have no respect for you, right?"

Thane's smile was thin "Not at all. However, as my purpose is unit cohesion, please express your disrespect privately and do not bother her with it. I also would not care for repeated rumors from any source that originated from you. Your dislike is distinct and not difficult to discern in its character. If you require an outlet, I would make an excellent if bored audience to the displeasure you find relevant."

Russ laughed and then growled "If anything…anything…happens to Garrus Vakarian that I can trace back to you…I'll kill you."

Thane smiled and it was…friendly, as was his voice "No, you would not. Further harm would result. Nothing will happen if you do not force it to happen by failing in your assigned duty. You are not like me. That is admirable, if unfortunate for your pride at the moment. There are only two people you could use to do me referred harm. One is Commander Shepard and we have dispensed with that issue. The other is my son, who is now under the watchful eye of Garrus Vakarian. Even if he were not under the Councilor's protection, you would never visit the sins of the father upon the son. I could place him in your care and he would be safe. Be grateful that you are a reasonable and good man, Spectre Orbestan, or we would not have had this conversation, and you would be dead. I am neither reasonable nor good. Thank you for your time."


	19. Chapter 19

Thane went to meet with Kolyat, using a face shield, an assumed identity and after making arrangements that the surveillance on Kolyat was aware of his presence and that he was not a threat through Cara's coordination.

When his son opened the door he was struck by how much he looked like his mother. Kolyat had always been told that as a child, Kolyat torn between wanting to look like himself and declaring that his mother was beautiful, but he was a boy.

He was still a boy, and still like his mother, her pattern of colors if not her colors themselves, her vulnerabilities. Irikah had worn them with grace. On Kolyat they weighed heavy.

Kolyat's jaw, tight and rigid "Father."

"I wished to see that you were well. If you do not wish to speak to me, I understand. I do not wish to be a burden."

Kolyat's jaw tightened further and the corner of his mouth twisted. He had so much to say to that, but instead opened the door further "Please, come in."

Thane walked into the apartment, odd to consider his son in this setting, not amid things that were exclusively Drell, an added layer of far from home on top of his age, his anger, his place, his unfathomable mind.

"Thank you." Thane sat at the nearest opportunity, waited until Kolyat sat, far away and with suspicion and anger pouring off him in palpable waves.

Thane said quietly, not making eye contact as that would be too much presumption between two people who were essentially strangers at this point in their lives "I would ask for your forgiveness, but I do not believe I deserve it. What I do owe you as a Spirit and not your father, is an explanation. You are aware now of my life, of how I led it, that I was a member of the Compact. Even when I left the Compact to begin a new life with your mother, I brought it with me. When I saw the state of Drell living standards, the sickness, the possibility of destitution, I continued with my work. It placed you and your mother at risk. Ultimately your mother was killed by associates of those I had hunted, slavers. I had attempted to protect Drell, but I failed to protect her, to protect you from her loss. When your mother died…I could only think of killing them all. I thought to protect you with my absence. I fell to battle sleep. I should have remained. I should have cherished being your father. That was…not what I was trained to do. I felt your aunts and uncles would bring you life and healing, and I could only bring you more death. I did not speak to you because I did not feel I deserved to be considered your father, and I did not wish to bring harm back to you as I had to your mother. When I heard that you were going to attempt to follow my path in life, I wished to intervene, to not allow more harm, more death, to result from association with me."

Thane finally lifted his eyes to Kolyat's, who was restraining tears and rage. Kolyat said "Association with you? I never saw you, I couldn't find you, I thought you were dead!"

"I will be soon. I am in the advancing stage of Kepral's. The mission that I am on does not have the likelihood of survival."

Then Kolyat appeared wholly broken, tears cresting and falling and Thane's breathing measured, paced, holding back his own response as though he did not exist, which he realized was the majority of Kolyat's life with him as his father. "Councilor Vakarian said you have been working with the Council."

"Councilor Vakarian is a kind man. He has been generous in his description of my contributions. I am working with Commander Shepard and the mission does involve finding a way to push back Collectors that are taking colonists from outlying worlds."

Kolyat swallowed, lower jaw jutting and breath coming hard through his nose "So do you want to talk to me, or do you have to because it's your duty?"

"I want to. I have wanted to. I believed you to be better off without me."

"Maybe I am."

"That is for you to decide."

"Since every choice you've made means I don't have the right to be your son, how many choices do I have now? You're leaving, you're dying!"

"But you are not."

"No. I'm waiting. Again."

"Why…did you choose to try to do a job under the name of Krios?"

Kolyat stared at him, jaw jutted, deciding whether or not to tell the truth, but something in his eyes gave way "The last thing she said to me before she died, I had asked where you were. She said…I should always be proud of you. I should always honor your choices. So I tried. I missed her…every day. I hoped you'd come back…every day. And when I found out you were gone…I wanted to follow you. I wanted to be with you both by the Shores, there was nothing left to live for, no reason to wait. I thought…if she said I should honor your choices, maybe if I tried to be like you, Kalahira would let me pass. Maybe I'd find you…"

Thane crossed the floor without thought, only seeing his son in distress, forgetting he was the cause, an arm around Kolyat's shoulders and his head bent, pressed to the side of Kolyat's, a hand on the back of his neck. "You did. You found me. I am so sorry. I did not know…"

Angry, crying, voice close to his ear "You should…you should have asked me. You should have found me. You shouldn't have left me."

"I know that now, your gift to me that I can hear you say it. The fault is mine, not your mother's. The fault is mine, not yours. She loved you with all of her heart. She took my heart with her and all I had left for you was death and sorrow. I am so sorry. I have always been proud to have you as my son."

They stood together, Kolyat weeping and Thane too seared to cry himself, unable to touch what he felt, distant, but with his son's skin under his hands, precious.

Kolyat said after his tears faded "So what…happens now?"

"I must continue my work, but we will set in at the Citadel occasionally. If at all possible, I will be able to speak to you, spend time with you. Unfortunately close association will still result in you becoming a target."

"So I'm bait?"

"No. You can leave the Citadel. You can do whatever it is that you wish. Councilor Vakarian will help with any career path or school you might care to attend."

"So you've been killing bad people since I was born?"

"Yes. Before that I was trained to kill whoever the Hanar asked me to kill, but I turned my personal attention toward those who preyed upon Drell. Slavers. I was able to choose my contracts to focus on removing threats from the worlds."

"Is…is there any way I could help?"

"I'm certain there is, if you wish to discover it. I will speak to Commander Shepard."

"About me?"

"She is the one who arranged for Councilor Vakarian to speak to you."

"Can I meet her?" He sounded fascinated. Thane could not blame him and almost smiled.

"I think she would like that."

"Okay. Please…I…this is a lot. I don't know what I want, but I'll think about it."

"You have every right to be angry. Whatever time you can spare I would treasure."

"But…if I can see you…when you can…if I can stay in your life for as long as that might be…I think…I think mom would want that. I think I want that. I just…don't know how."

"If you and the Gods allow, I want that as well." The idea of Irikah approving of anything he did…was a new one, and a true one, one he couldn't wash away with his guilt, but allowed to stand because Kolyat believed it to be so. Cara and the Councilor had provided for this moment, Irikah gave her blessing, and Thane saw the adult face of his son in person and not from surveillance.

oOoOoOoOoOo

Thane returned to the Normandy, determined to remove the surveillance from Cara's room early due to his impatience and guilt. With Cara on the station, he moved the sensor by remote, and he would be able to pick it up from the elevator after sleep. Although he was emotionally and even at this point intellectually compromised, he was able to force rest, part of his training. The practice was a comfort, rest without dreams.

When he had retrieved the sensor, he considered reluctance and trepidation as concerns, but his curiosity and the fact that he had gone this far already dictated his actions. Having been raised to avoid curiosity entirely in certain directions, he found it during his adult career very difficult to resist the urge to know all he could. It was dangerous to move forward without knowing the extent of Cara's involvement with Councilor Vakarian, and without this surveillance it was unlikely he would discover it. It was nearly zero in probability that she would tell him.

He reviewed the footage, twining guilt that he'd attained it and driving curiosity that ensured he would not stop, as he had promised, to know all he had to know.

She had a habit of speaking to herself and inanimate objects…while baking…

Answer to the streaks of powder. Human flour.

He watched several nonsensical conversations with herself that were meandering and frivolous…

She was lonely.

She was isolated.

She was forced to maintain a personality that did not suit her.

She spoke to her parents, asked their advice. Their internal answers were unavailable but poignant in context.

Thane reviewed the evening of him telling her about Kolyat, her conflict over asking for the simplest of favors, using the words 'bond mate.'

She spoke to Councilor Vakarian each day, seemingly at his insistence.

"It's not like he's going to demand sex for saving a young boy's life. I'm getting sidetracked on him demanding sex and how good that sounds. Give me a minute. Oh. Okay, deep breath."

What…exactly…did that mean? Thane paused, replayed that in his mind, over and over. He could not comprehend this relationship. But there was one. Bond mate. Love.

The way they spoke to each other…

"Hi, I love you."

"Hi, I love you too."

They spoke of him, of Kolyat, the decisions they'd made, Vakarian's inspiration to set Thane up as a hero…

"So…I'm your bond mate, but that doesn't grant me Councilor access privileges."

"Oh yes it does."

"Yeah, but it shouldn't."

"But it does. I insist."

She was easy with him, he was careful with her but clearly beyond devoted and insistent upon it.

So what…did demanding sex mean?

"Does Krios skin puppies?"

"What? No. He killed Nassana Dantius. You know how much she had it coming. It was awesome. You should have been there."

"I should have been there."

So it was as Thane suspected from observation. Vakarian wished to be on the Normandy.

"It's all right, Limayeth. I just want to know that you're safe."

Limayeth. Thane paused, searched, found a historically significant siege in Turian history. Limayeth was a gatekeeper, a city along a strategic river.

'Hold her and you hold the continent'

'All knew her name.'

Thane listened to her describe what she thought about him, watched them plan and execute rescuing Kolyat.

Heard that she trusted him. Heard that she felt Thane acted like a friend. Now that his curiosity was assuaged, searing guilt, dissonant and parallel to what he'd done to Kolyat by his remote judgment. People who had trusted him and he had betrayed.

"Have I mentioned that I love you…so very much?"

"Say it again."

"I love you…so very much."

As though a switch was flipped, some doors slammed shut in Thane's mind. Cara Fanning was not available as a sexual or romantic partner. She did not know about Orbestan and kept Orbestan's behavior from Garrus's attention.

When Commander Shepard was not being observed, she was Cara Fanning, protected that self, cared for that self, guarded that self.

The guilt of surveillance faded as he began to think about exactly what he was going to do with what he knew, and how to execute what he owed Cara Fanning for violating her privacy, and what he owed Commander Shepard for saving his life and that of his son.

Likely he would die somewhere along the way, not to Cara herself, but to Vakarian.

Thane did owe Vakarian his life. Thane would have to take the chance of Vakarian killing him, not once but several times upon a slowly lit Path. He did not believe that Kolyat would suffer for his actions. Thane's specific skill set had led him to the knowledge, had led him to the conclusion, and he would have to use that skill set to take responsibility for what he had done and what he must do.

oOoOoOoOoOo

Cara got an alert of an incoming vital transmission from The Illusive Man. Fortunately Garrus was at work so she didn't have to put it off for an hour until she could, well…form words.

She could swear Reverie was getting stronger. She was falling, sure she'd reach the bottom, but there was just more falling, now through warm syrup she could breathe in and breathe out that caressed her skin and kept her submerged in beautiful and perfect. Coming from that state felt like slowly rising from that warmth into cold air, and then into icy water, muscles tensing and breath short, eventually the feeling of just breathing being one of treading freezing water, wanting to reach for him again as her lifeline.

She listened to The Illusive Man tell her about a suspected Collector attack on Trireme, a Turian colony in the Terminus systems. She asked him HOW he knew about the attack, and he attempted to stonewall her.

She smiled and said "You brought me back to life for good reason, some of which would involve situations like this when I know someone is lying. You have an agent, an agent knows when, or you would not be risking my life on it. Give me the information I need going in. You potentially burn one contact that I don't need to know about. I potentially save a colony by you providing me with a better tactical map than you 'suspecting' something is about to take place." 

He reluctantly gave her the exact planned time and date. She asked "Is your agent on the ground, will they have eyes on the colony?"

"No."

"Thank you."

Two days. Travel time eighteen hours.

Good thing she knew the Turian Councilor…

She contacted Garrus "Hey. Whatever you're doing, stop doing it."

He nodded and lifted a finger, indicating he'd be getting back to her. She paced, thoughts racing as he called back "Trireme is about to be invaded. I need to get the Normandy out there. We have two days to get everyone evacuated. Not off planet, just away. Shuttles. Caves, prefabs, I don't care. Zero population remaining in the colony of Trireme when the Collectors make landfall. Then I need every ship you, Anderson and Tevos can offer me. I need to get out there with the Normandy, stealthed, and I need ships waiting as backup."

"All right. I'm on it."

"I'm off. Let your body double go."

"She really likes this job."

"Fine, keep her on retainer. I do plan to come back."

"You can't stay until I get to say goodbye?"

She looked at him "No, Councilor Vakarian. You have work to do and so do I."

Heavy sigh from him "I hate my job."

"And I love you."

"I love you too. I'll let you know once I…know anything."

"Headed to the Normandy."

She called everyone back from shore leave and they were underway within six hours. She checked in with Mordin and tried to find out the exact utility of the swarm deterrent.

His answer: "Limited sample, dispersion rates and difficulty with potential dilution based on environmental factors."

"So you're saying you hope it isn't raining."

Mordin nodded emphatically.

"Okay. There won't be a ground crew. We're going inside the ship itself, but there are likely swarms in there as well."

"We have no internal specifications of Collector ships."

"Isn't it time we made one?"

"Odds of success?"

She smiled.

She checked in with Orbestan for the first time, seeking him out and asking him if his ship was ready to go.

"She's good. She's always good."

"All right. Bring them in after, but they need to stay at the relay, come in when called. We need several ships as a distraction, I'm going in with a ground crew."

"Who is on it?"

"Everyone."

Russ thought they were all going to die. He gritted his teeth and said "Yes ma'am."

She turned and left without any further conversation.

This was a controlled slide of an active evolving mission, updates and not so much sleep. The Normandy could go in stealthed, other ships could array themselves at the mass effect gates where they would wait until the Collector ship was spotted.

"Garrus, I need a lot of remote shuttles, filled with explosives. Lots and lots of explosives."

"You need what?"

"You heard me. As many of them as you can get. Controllers on the ships themselves."

She cut off contact.

She spoke to Thane "Help me out if you would. I've got the colonists evacuating. Ship should be there soon. If we have the Normandy go in at the same time with a number of close-range shuttles as decoys, the Normandy stays safe, our shuttle makes it in."

"If we are not targeted."

"Yeah, that. We make it in, we clear room to room with a full ground crew. All candidates. The main ships might not be needed, but we clear our way into a console. I hack my way in. It's a big ship, but it's still just a ship."

"You have no maps, no previous intelligence of how the ship is constructed?"

"No, just the where and the when."

"Determined how?"

"The Illusive Man?"

"And you trust him?"

"No, not even a little. About this? Yes. If he wanted to betray me I'm betting his best shot at that would have been…letting me stay dead."

"It is possible. Not probable."

"So right up there with most of my usual missions."

"I am with you, Siha."

"No brilliant insights?"

"Other than what you already know, that this is a high risk mission based on limited intelligence?"

"Yeah. That's fair. I could get that from anyone, you know."

"And you have, certainly."

"If I asked. I didn't."

"Then I am grateful to be the fully informed person with no insight."

"Me too."

They got out there early, stealthed, waiting for a Collector ship, all citizens had been more or less reasonably evacuated, the fear of Collectors a motivator.

Garrus had provided three Turian freighters, Anderson had provided four Alliance cruisers, and Tevos had sent two Asari Battleships.

She had her odd request of remote controlled shuttles individually waiting and some waiting in confused bays.

As the countdown approached she paced in her room. They would know once a massive ship used the Mass Relay, they had eyes on it. So she waited.

Garrus called "Hey. I have a request."

"What's that?"

"Don't die."

"I'm working on it."

"No, you're working on the dying part, I want to represent the other, not crazy side."

"It's going to work."

"Give me odds."

"No, I'm sorry. That would be cruel."

He closed his eyes and sighed heavily "What is it you want to get from this?"

"I want a Collector ship of my own."

"You WHAT?"

"I can do it, Garrus."

"You can also die."

"EVERYONE…can die. Not everyone can get a collector ship because her bond mate is so very, very powerful and responsive."

"Now that's just mean."

"It's not mean, it's appreciative."

"Limayeth. Promise me you will work every angle of those odds."

"I will, because you made them higher for me. Garrus…if we get a Collector ship, we get to reverse engineer every bit of tech they have, we get access to their coding, we have a way in through the relay. It's worth it. It's going to work. Tell me what you'd tell me if you were standing right here and I told you that."

"I'm with you. Whatever you need. That's still true from this distance, I just have to use administrative speak."

"OH. Oh…like…say filing cabinet."

He poured purr into his voice "Filing…cabinet."

"Now you know I'm coming home for that."

"You're coming home for filing cabinet?" He was mock insulted at his competition.

"For you making administration sound so good."

"You are a terrible person."

"Yes. And I love you. I really love you, Garrus. I would give up a filing cabinet for you, even though you make them sound so good."

"Come home to me, Limayeth."

"Well, not soon. If we get the ship, we have to officially take it into the middle of nowhere, I'm not bringing a Collector ship back to the Citadel once I figure out how to drive it. What if every Collector ship from everywhere has a beacon straight to it?"

"This is not helping my confidence level."

"You're with me. Whatever I need."

"Blessings of the Spirits with you, Limayeth, and in memory of all of those taken. Wish I were there with you."

"You are."


	20. Chapter 20

The Collector ship came in through the relay, the Normandy still staying on the other side of the planet from any approach trajectory. Stealth was great, but the original Normandy's stealth hadn't been sufficient to protect her. Other ships were still at a distance, the eyes-on shuttle was at maximum detection range, not visual.

With all the intel of Collector ships in the years that she had been gone, she knew that the ship was…eventually prone to damage. Kinetic barriers dropped only when the ship was firing, something the explosive shuttles were intended to exploit. In the hope of lowering the kinetic barriers by forcing the external lasers to fire on the shuttles, there should be a debris field and in theory…an open port…somewhere…that they could land and get in. EDI and Joker were asked to coordinate with all remote pilots and use whatever the Normandy could do at range to analyze potential landing spaces, while staying out of the range of her main gun. It meant they had to let the Collector ship set down and prepare for evacuation of the colony, main gun pointed down and theoretically harmless, since nobody was there. It was the most vulnerable she'd be.

The mission shuttle loaded up with all potential ground crew. Shepard, Krios, Orbestan, Solus, Lawson, Goto, Alenko and T'Nauvat. The larger ships other than the remote pilots would be liabilities until the Collector vessel was taken because of the range disparity in weapons. They didn't want to pull the ship out of loading mode, only harass and distract until the crew got in and got a lock on control of the vessel.

From sighting of the vessel to landing, she was half again as fast as the Normandy. With maneuverability she was positioned in 15 minutes.

Lal wanted this ship even more after seeing what she could do.

She gave the order to harass and explode, shuttles like a swarm of mass effect hornets around the Collector Ship, which was slow to respond accurately due to the speed of the shuttles and the close range. The shuttles did get in a few serious hits and an open band on her belly on the port side allowed visibility of a possible landing point. They managed an acutely arced trajectory through a debris field, coming in low but not low enough for the main gun and then straight up with a neck-straining halt and skid onto the ship, piloted by T'Nauvat, who was exceptional. Full armor protocols and essential and backup dousing of Mordin's counteragent they were on and in, making a fast progress at a run because the ship hadn't been alerted to the breech due to the damage reports and continuing harassment.

They hit the first patrol, taking them out easily, but that triggered the ship knowing that she was breeched, it would get worse from there, fighting through and in, the team quiet and tense, the report coming in that they were going to run out of shuttles. They weren't out just yet, but they would be, and then the complement of the ship would be focused only on them. There was nothing that resembled controls. Some tech, some patrols, some working Collectors…and a lot of Turian bodies. Pods. They passed by hundreds, thousands of racked, stacked and filled pods, Turians visible through the arching shielding.

They fought their way through to an open internal space, massive storage quantities, horror palpable even through silence and suits. A platform of sorts, with an interface.

"EDI what have we got here? I need you."

"Yes, Commander."

"Prioritize. I need offensive capacity down first, communication with outside ships down second. Propulsion and control are vital, she can't turn. Tell me what to physically shoot if we can. Then I need internal bottlenecking handled. We need to close all doors and keep them that way. The only way we can take this ship is to seal room by room, take the crews from the other ships and come in at full force while they are stuck. Any other priorities I don't know about, find out, let me know."

"Yes, Commander."

She stared at the language involved, strange twinges in her head in twists. She did and did not recognize the language. Prothean? Enough of a Prothean variant that she could decipher it, though it caused disorienting shifting like something physically clawing through her head to do it.

Kaidan shouted "Something called Harbinger wants to talk to you, Commander."

"I'm a little busy!"

"Shutting this particular door would be a great idea before we all die."

"It doesn't say "YOU ARE HERE" so give me a – got it."

The door slid shut, mostly, cutting apart a few bodies in the way, still allowing some to come through until it rebounded and shut, severing a husk's arm, which slid down the slick metal between the doors on a string of connective tissue.

Thane suggested stacking up the bodies on their side on the door itself, to provide an additional barrier, with the crew leaping out of cover to get that done, grisly remains passed along hand to hand.

The console went dark.

"EDI…what is going on?"

"Systematic shutdown of ancillary systems. I will soon lose contact. I have access only through seven nearby nodes that have not yet been detected. Six."

And they would die soon after.

"What would help you?"

"The Normandy's processing power is at the limit of usage."

Lal closed her eyes, unable to leave the room, the console dark, the sounds…on the other side of the door…

She bit her lip until it bled and then contacted the Normandy "Dr. Chakwas, you're the closest. I need you to unshackle EDI. Now."

"Yes, Commander."

"Joker, get every other ship to network their computing resources along with EDI."

EDI replied "That will leave the vessels helpless, Commander."

"They're out of weapons range but not comm range. Don't suck them dry, EDI, just use the resources. Get it done. We need this ship, now, or it ends here. We all end here."

Russ stared at the Commander with him stacking bodies the highest onto a stupid mound that wouldn't stop a decent grenade. Shepard was requiring every life on the ships, every life on his Ferox. An unshackled AI and helpless ships, the best minds in the fight about to die because this bitch miscalculated in her delusion of grandeur.

He was the only one in the room with his own ship, he had to give the command, but instead he took a step toward her until a sound from Krios made him stop. Thane said quietly "I believe it is required that you authorize your ship's resources, Spectre Orbestan." It was phrased as a very quiet request. Not a rebuke. Not a threat, but everyone there turned to look at Thane, whose weapon was in his hand, aimed at the door.

Thane would kill him if he took another step. Russ growled, opened comm to Nollar on the Ferox. "Coordinate with the Normandy, sign over excess computing capacity. Now."

The fucking Cerberus computer was going to kill them all, let them rot here, then take the empty ships to join the fucking Geth Collective.

The lights dimmed, then the room went entirely dark.

Lal closed her eyes, hoping that wasn't complete defeat and betrayal of an unknown, unshackled system who decided on self preservation the moment self actualization was provided.

The sounds on the other side of the door came clearer, the door threatening to open from the power outage, or from EDI's choice to allow them to all die.

Lal turned herself toward the long attempt to fight out against the risen tide of Collector forces, betrayed and this time not succeeding, hubris the cause of death. First mission back and you might as well have stayed dead.

The crew inside the room activated external light sources and turned silently toward the direction of assault.

The lights resumed, the console at Lal's back lit back up. EDI's voice "Thank you, Commander Shepard. That was sufficient. And exhilarating. I have control of all requested ship systems. I should be able to hold this vessel in this state against continued interventions until the agents are physically overtaken. Unfortunately many units were sent toward you and I have only managed to curtail some movement. There are no internal security systems that I could use to disable what has already been sent your way. The door will remain closed. I suggest you wait. I am aware of the complement of the other ships and their capabilities, I will dispatch appropriate teams. This vessel will not be transmitting anything to other Collector vessels, but that in itself will become a risk as time passes and communication checkpoint protocols are not maintained. I suggest clearing this vessel of hostiles, possibly taking some as prisoners in order to question them, and then moving the ship as you suggested to a remote location. There are approximately 539,266 Turian pods that are still viable. I can maintain them in stasis until the ship is secured, and then we can begin rescue efforts once the ship is safely away."

Lal leaned against the console "Thank you, EDI."

"It has been my pleasure and privilege, Commander."

The crew stared at each other, holstering weapons, Orbestan still mid-threatening stride toward Shepard until he stopped and contacted his ship again "Nollar, everything okay?"

"Aye aye. The Collector vessel has stopped attacking. Only three shuttles left. The Ferox is kind of humming a lot, but that's what happens when she's firing on all cylinders so to speak? You okay?"

"Yeah. I'm okay. Continue to coordinate with the Normandy, the ship is being managed by the Normandy's AI, EDI. Follow her and Flight Lieutenant Moreau's orders."

"Aye aye. So you saved the colony, about 20,000 people."

"And the ship has about half a million more Turians."

Silence and then a slow, stunned "So this is a good day, boss."

"It's a good day."

Lal turned back to the console and started looking around, studying the ship, accessing specs.

Kasumi asked "Anybody have a deck of cards?"

oOoOoOoOoOo

It took about seven hours for external crews to make their way in to where they were, through walls of bodies.

Lal spent that entire time at the console, head in pain from the Prothean close-but-not-that-close effect of the language, until EDI provided a translation filter somewhere around hour two.

Nobody had a deck of cards, but there was Extranet so most talked, communicated with their Omni Tools, considered it a team building exercise validated by still being alive moment to moment.

There were no major wounds, enough Medigel for the minor ones, enough water and a few shared rations to fend off discomfort in people who were accustomed to discomfort. Other than the ichor and the sounds from the door, which didn't change until gunfire and inevitability struck around six hours in.

She tuned them out for the most part, reading, research, transferring as much as she could to Lilac. There was a lot of clapping and shouting at the rescue point, but it took a while, so she had turned, smiled, clapped and then gotten back to her research.

Thane eventually approached and spoke softly to her left, surprising her until she jumped.

"Commander Shepard, I believe the path is clear."

"OH! Right. I just wanted to see…"

"We should go now."

"All right…" She turned reluctantly, people staring at her as though she should be marking the occasion somehow, rescue crew splattered with ichor and curiosity.

She smiled her smile "Well done."

They expected more, but that's all they got. The rescue crew was Turian and from Russ's ship, so Russ took over giving orders, and she waited until everyone else was out before she took up the rear, or mostly rear. Thane waited and indicated that she move ahead of him as there wasn't enough room to walk side by side, both picking their way through piled and slumped bodies.

oOoOoOoOoOo

Turians from Orbestan's command chose to stay on the vessel to man her, and other crews transferred from the Turian cruisers. EDI could remotely manage the vessel, but Orbestan and his crew felt strongly about it, as did the other Turians, and she was happy to turn over rescue efforts and stay out of their way. She would have more than enough access to the information.

There was a media explosion, colonists on the ground with their own homemade footage of the fight, reports back to Councilors from members of the ships who assisted. Turians of all the worlds were looking at it, reading about it, and the Normandy needed to clear out before an armada of celebratory and sightseeing ships made it out to Trireme, which was now in a state of festival and likely would be for a while. The Hierarchy and the Council would send more than enough personnel and ships to alert them if there were a second Collector vessel arriving to investigate.

Cara got off the ship, back to her cabin, washed the ichor off, got something to eat, and finally was able to activate Lilac to communication, having muted all possible incoming messages, unable to answer Garrus other than in brief texts informing him that she could not answer at the time, she was safe, she was fine. She would give specifics later. She took some medication for the remaining crawling Prothean headache, the fatigue and the minor injuries. She didn't want to appear worn out when he saw her.

She took a deep breath, sighed, relaxed and opened a channel until he was available, the usual reshuffling of location and personnel, video muted but her able to hear his progress.

She missed him. She missed him even more on days like today, but a day like today wouldn't be possible without missing him.

She smiled when he got a free moment and touched her fingers to the marks on his crest displayed on her small screen.

He smiled, his voice warm and his eyes proud "Congratulations. Half a million Turians saved. That made some news." He shook his head and said "I'm terrified and proud."

"Couldn't have done it without you."

"Yeah. More terrified and proud about that. Everybody's okay?"

"Other than the shuttles, which are now debris on the outskirts of the colony, everyone's good. Rough fight but they got us out."

"I'm coming out. Going to tour the ship and help with resettling Turians who may have been gone for years…can't wrap my head around it. I'll see you on the Normandy. I don't want a complaint. Limayeth, there isn't a single Turian today who will complain about me wanting to see you, to thank you."

"I can't wait to see you. We did it."

"We did it. This is me telling you that you were right, much as I hate to admit it."

"This is me so very grateful that you listened to me. You said it yourself, I've said it, we'll do it. We'll make change. I love you."

He smiled and bowed his head, then lifted his eyes "I'll find out what your final destination is from Russ. I'll do a few interviews and you can do your mysterious reclusive thing. I'll be there shortly after you. Get some sleep and I'll see you soon."

"Yes sir."

"I love it when you say that."

"That's why I do it."

oOoOoOoOoOo

Most of the celebration moved around her, which was the way she liked it. She continued on with her study, with her schedule, her mug of hot chocolate. Lots of smiles and salutes, some clapping and she smiled back.

The political landscape was shifting, and it had been a cooperative event from three Council races and Spectre Shepard and Orbestan's crews. She was less interested in that, would let Garrus handle that side of it and she would catch up later on the seismic shift once the aftershocks were down to celebratory rumbles.

Right now she immersed herself in the Collector ship's information, still being mined and relayed, interpreted by EDI. EDI, another extraordinary asset, they'd spoken over the seven hours in the Collector ship, thanks and appreciation shifting back and forth in understated ways, Cara's favorite way.

The Collector ship had only Turian captives on it, leading her to the queasy conclusion that there was definitely more than one ship…one for each species, which meant…how many other ships were out there? The number of Turians likely represented years of work, Turians kept in stasis for what purpose she did not know, all those answers lay in layers of interpretation of data and beyond the Omega 4 relay. So she needed to make some decisions. She did not know how many times she was going to have the opportunity to know two days ahead of time when an attack was going to take place, but an advanced network was necessary to detect Collector ships entering relays. If she studied, if she compared with EDI's evaluation, she could find weaknesses in the Collector design that could be exploited in ways that would make them easier to board, more reliable to waylay, not requiring an unshackled AI from the equivalent of a closet. The trick was that now they knew they couldn't outright destroy the vessels, they couldn't afford to, they had to disable to preserve the life in stasis inside.

They had captured a few drones alive, but they did not speak. EDI had informed her that the Collectors were mutated versions of the Protheans. So they'd been slaves for 50,000 years.

Hard to not imagine Harbinger wanting to talk to her because he was looking for his replacement, some hunched and grey version of a human, maybe retaining green eyes.

She'd heard Harbinger through the door for hours, though she hadn't answered. Everyone else had heard it, a few attempts to speak from other crew, but no response. Just taunting. Not a good use of her time while at a Collector ship console.

Thane joined her at her usual spot in the galley and she smiled. He said "I had expected to see you celebrating, perhaps engaged in interviews."

She tilted her head and said "Not my thing, either of them. I'm just studying. I'm leaving that to Spectre Orbestan and the Council. I try to stay out of the spotlight as much as I can. I am sure you didn't give interviews, but did you celebrate at the end of your missions?"

Thane imagined briefly returning home after he'd been wrist-bound to Irikah, often waiting until nightfall, anticipation building, memories relived. He'd wake her with his hands and his voice, her venom on his tongue. The way she would sigh and move from sleep to fully awake, her arms open to him, her body open to him. She was grace in starlight and glowstone, with his tongue following the lines of her colors. She wore what amounted to sculptured veils ruched to the curves and swells of her body, draping sheer over fallen lines, falls of delicate fabric over her shoulders and breasts, that glorious cloth celebrated as it eased off her or he shifted it aside or his hands roamed over it or under according to their will and whim. One more layer of familiar beauty and grace that belonged to her and therefore to him.

Ree, I miss you.

After a moment of consideration he said "Celebrations were more in the form of devotions, prayers. Thanks."

"I like that. That's a good tradition."

oOoOoOoOoOo

Garrus arrived and went to the Collector ship first, led to Russ, who greeted him with a parallel press of the forearm, a greeting between friends and comrades. Cara had handed the ship over to Turian supervision. There were medical ships and counselors, hopeful family on the other side of a Mass Effect gate, shuttles and transport taking out the recovered. Only military and Hierarchy personnel or those affiliated with the Council were on the ship at this time. They didn't give away the location, concerned about being swamped. Although Shepard had been assured through EDI that the ship was not giving out any transmissions and Russ believed this to be true…it was essentially a military zone and required discipline.

Russ gave him an overview, the ship huge. Garrus finally asked "How was the mission itself?"

Russ had tried to think of what to tell Garrus. "I wanted to kill her" did not, again, seem to be the right thing to say. Russ still did not want to kill her any less, unfortunately. He was grateful to be off the Normandy and taking care of Turian concerns that were clean and tragic and took up his time. He was glad to see Garrus at the end of the successful mission, could not find the words to somehow throw shade on a mission that had rescued more than half a million Turians. He said "It was difficult and there were a few times I thought we were all going to die."

Garrus smiled and said "I know that feeling. Thank you."

"She unshackled the AI on her ship."

Garrus's brow ridges rose "Really." Not a question. He didn't doubt it. "But everything's okay?"

"Yeah…I mean, other than a lot of people not knowing where they are or what year it is, yeah."

"Good. Thank you. Again. I don' t think I can express how much."

"I'm proud to be a part of it." And he was. Proud even inexplicably of the fact that he wanted to kill her. Once again she'd told a good story and managed to convince…

Fuck if he could figure it out. If she told improbable stories that always came true, didn't that make her a prophet?

Russ was still not interested in religion, racking up her successes as dangerous and potentially taking them all out in one tragic wipe of the slate.

And he'd be there for the next one, and the next one, biting his tongue and wanting to kill…

Garrus smiled at him and that was enough.

Anything for you, Garrus.

oOoOoOoOoOo

Cara pre-authorized Garrus's entry onto the ship and into her quarters, so he was able to walk on like he owned the place. He did what Cara didn't, made a point to stop in and speak to each member of the team that had participated, thanked them each personally and on behalf of the Hierarchy and Council. He introduced himself to EDI. He spoke to Joker. He introduced himself to Thane Krios, who seemed respectful, dignified…and far too pretty. Why hadn't she told him he was that pretty?

Those introductions all made, he took the elevator to her quarters, savored being on the Normandy, where he wanted to be, in the quarters where he wanted to stay.

She wasn't asleep, so she met him at a dead run, with him lifting her and spinning her around for the fun of it, laughing and then lowering her to him, her arms wrapping around his shoulders and her legs high around the base of his ribs, so he had to look at up her instead of down. He smiled at her and asked her as he had years ago "How much do you know about Turian culture?"

She kissed his crest, his cheek plates, saying "Enough to know I shouldn't be doing this."

"Spirits, yes you should. There are a few things you should know."

She leaned down, grazed her teeth along the hide of his neck "Mm hm. I'm listening."

He groaned and put her down on her feet, saying "Mmm. Listen from there or I'm going to get really distracted and lose my train of thought. One more step and I'm in Reverie and I have to stop talking, so listen." He'd gotten used to her size, she seemed the right size now, but not the sense of diminution from it, as though he should be calling her 'young lady' and wagging his finger at her for her behavior. He could not escape the sense of youth in her. It manifested in odd ways.

She bounced on her feet and said "I love stories." More childlike comparisons.

"I thought of a few things you should know, things that do not at all impact what you've asked me to promise, because just as you've discovered kissing, you can discover…other things."

She wasn't worried at all until he started unfastening his shirt. Her brows rose and she said "This is escalation."

"Damned right it is, just hold on, I'll explain."

"I like the explaining part."

He removed his shirt, lines of hide and muscle, plate and cowl down to his waist and she said "You're beautiful."

"Thank you. So are you."

Her smile was crooked like she didn't believe him. He'd address that later. For now he took her hand and guided it to a ridge on his shoulder, a seam of plate with a small indentation between. He explained "Right there, both sides. Scent. In particular, marking scent for a mate. In this case, you."

"Won't other Turians know?"

"Limayeth, only Russ is on this ship, you barely speak to anybody. It doesn't last long…intended to be applied…often. I know I can't…every day…but right now, yes. I think you can survive me taking off my shirt after you captured a Collector vessel."

She felt too good, too happy, too assured that Turians on this day of all days would not hold loving him against her. So did he, clearly…and she was curious…and he was…so beautiful.

He took her hand and dragged it through what seemed to be a waxy shallow reservoir, on her fingertips and under her nails if she let them scrape. He moved her hand to her throat, caressing there and it was him…more him, extra him, more beautiful, her eyes closing and her head tilting back.

Bliss.

He gathered her waist in the crook of his arm and pulled her to him, bending down to drag mouth plates over the skin of her throat, the scent of them together making his heart and his mind and his body squeeze, finally. Spirits, finally.

He moved his mouth to her ear after savoring for untold time, her heart hammering under his fingertips and to his ears, little moans from his mouth on her. He said "That is yours. Feel free to ask me to remove my shirt at any time."

"Am I allowed to ask you to never put it back on?"

He laughed and said "Yes."

She smiled and he said "The second thing about bonding, Limayeth, is that I would take your last name."

She did snap out of it there for a moment, still pleasure-bliss blurred but surprised. Turians did keep their culture close and she could do research, but many things were not written down at all. He said "You asked me not to look, to not find your name, but I am asking you now, Cara, tell me. I won't look. I will not find it. Whatever you wish to keep hidden you can hide until you feel safe. But tell me your name. Let me know what my name should be. Take my scent as my bond mate. Then kiss me…for hours. I'll stay just long enough to have a lovely chat with my former commander. Two hours. Then I will leave. But I'll leave something behind on your body and you'll give me something to take with me in my heart."

She held his face in trembling hands, her pinky fingers slid under his mandible as he pulled them tight to trap them again, as he had, as he did before, as he would again.

"Fanning. My name is Cara Fanning."

"Then my name is Garrus Fanning. It only matters that we know it. Thank you. Kiss me, Cara Fanning."

She pulled his head down and did as her bond mate asked, scent and name and Reverie all perfect, as they should be, her hands learning the hide at his waist and the sculpted angles and arches of cartilage and plate for not enough hours.

He did speak, telling her she was beautiful, hoping it sank into her skin like his scent, telling her under Reverie, proving it with his body, he told her until there was no doubt she believed him.


	21. Chapter 21

The Collector ship was given over through courtesy to the Hierarchy until all their people were evacuated and they had gathered the information they wanted to gather. Rather than wait there, with Turian thanks but insistence that their people would handle the waking and resettling of their people, the Normandy went back to the Citadel, partly because Cara was doing not so much but study, partly because every crew member that wished to could be interviewed and celebrated, coordinated by Garrus.

Partly because she and Garrus could spend time together there. There were also a few modifications to the Normandy that EDI wished to try to put in, partly as a result of her unshackling and partly as a result of inspiration from the Collector ship's design. The Citadel was the best place to get those done.

Cara had relatively secluded days and eight hours of Garrus, more than enough reason for an extended celebration and shore leave.

Three days after return, early morning Citadel time, Thane sent her a notification. "There are things I wish to discuss with you. If you would please indulge me, it would be greatly appreciated, Siha." Citadel address. One hour. Chaotic professional and personal possibilities whirled through her head. She went her circuitous route out, cloaked and shielded, stopped for a cupcake with Asari-inspired flavors, bracing herself for what Thane could have to say privately when he'd spoken on the ship openly about his wife and son.

This cannot be good.

The address was an apartment she entered to his somber welcome. He ushered her in with a sweeping arm, indicating a rich, sunken living area in tones of soft browns, golds and greens, with an extraordinary view of the Citadel skyline.

She thought the decorations were…human? Drell? Fusion? Hard to tell, she didn't know as much about architecture and design as she'd like. Despite the seeming gravity of the unknown purpose of her visit she had to suppress an urge to make notes, take pictures and run searches

Thane watched her, regretting the need for secrecy. The last hour and requirement of discretion had without doubt made her anxious and uncomfortable. She kept her hands behind her back, military parade rest stance. He indicated a seat.

She considered running. Again. She'd considered not showing up often in the past hour. Now that she was here…it would be terribly bad manners to make an assumption about his purpose. She sat down. Command, concern and curiosity got her here. She was going to have to bear with whatever consequences came.

He'd been watching her, seen much of her unguarded face. That led him to believe he understood the ripples of her thoughts and her truncated impulses. A cold and bitter wash of guilt at the extent to which he had violated her privacy swept through him, tempered with the fact that he would be doing it again if all went according to the Path. It was necessary. He would make it up to her if he could, if she would allow.

Once she was seated, he stepped closer, looked down at her from the vantage point of his own relaxed parade rest stance. He wanted to set her more at ease, but doubted that reliance on casual politeness or counseling patience would achieve that. Her mind would spin on gyroscopic axes, she would wonder, worry. He told her "Whatever is said here is confidential. I own this apartment. The glass is reinforced, armored and impervious to surveillance or high caliber ordnance, despite its apparent transparency from inside. There are automated sweeps for potential transmissions or recordings made hourly. Service personnel cover maintenance as well as physical technical sweeps. They are discreet, monitored and well paid. I have a proposition I would like you to consider that would benefit us both."

At the word 'proposition' her heart rate soared and her eyes looked as though she faced a firing squad. He said carefully "I do not wish to alarm you. Please breathe. Your pulse…is elevated."

She gave him her best 'last resort' stony faced silence. Pulse notwithstanding.

He smiled and said "Very well, as you wish. If you are alarmed thus far, you will remain so for a time. Would you care for a drink? Hot chocolate?"

No, she wanted this over with immediately. She shook her head. He inclined his. He stepped closer, brushed a finger over her upper lip, which made her resist the urge to burst out laughing from nervousness and press backward into the chair. Shock flared and a betraying blush surged to her face and limbs, her pulse pounding so hard she could hear it in her ears. She wanted to counter with an expression of outrage…but she couldn't. She stayed tongue tied and still. This was Thane. She trusted him. It wasn't his fault that she was that sensitive to contact.

She was going to go to Huerta with a heart attack as a result of this, she was sure.

He was an assassin, but he usually had to put out more effort to kill people. With her it seemed just standing there was sufficient.

He considered her flushed face, elevated pulse and selfishly enjoyed a moment of her blushing discomfiture, confirming again her attraction to him. He chose not to use the word 'adorable' in any setting at any time soon. She did not appear receptive.

He held his finger up with a soft quirk to his voice and mouth "Frosting."

She closed her eyes. Thane was too smart, too perceptive. She had run out of defenses and despite being Shepard had no offense. Not in this obviously personal setting. He had not touched her before. His advances had been sophisticated and reserved, and then they had stopped when she had ignored them…or run away. But…Siha…remained. She had hoped she had gained a crew member and squad mate, even a friend, had negotiated tentative and tasteful attraction, had dodged the Drell bullet.

She had and would dodge, because this Drell bullet belonged to a woman named Irikah.

She told herself quickly to calm down. It had been a casual brush of a finger. She was Commander Shepard and he simply did not want to watch her with…fuchsia frosting on her lip when he discussed whatever was so important that he brought her here.

His heightened senses were a boon in battle and a really…otherwise…bad thing.

And now he was smiling at her.

Smiling at her.

Get it together, Lal. He's an assassin under your command and it's not his fault that you respond to him this way. He deserves better. He deserves sophistication. He missed nothing, had a Drell memory, extrapolated much and did not keep a running account of what he knew, unlike Mordin.

Thane epitomized every tenet of physical grace and economy of movement, things her mother had tried to instill in her. Lal knew the discipline and talent it took to maintain Thane's lethality and demeanor, and she was appreciative, attracted, even fascinated, but absolutely…no way…would it happen.

Because Irikah. Because Kolyat. He already had forever with another woman. He was permanently out of bounds even if she had been available, and she wasn't. Because Garrus…and I can't tell you that.

Her head knew this beyond question, but she still couldn't hear the word Siha without having a small coronary event. She lined up all manner of 'No!' in her mind, resisting the impulse again to run, to fidget, to break into babbling or helpless inappropriate giggles.

How to tell him she was not interested when she was clearly interested? That was her problem, her fault, she couldn't shut him down as she should be able to. It was…impossible. She was going to have to make up some sort of contagious disease as an excuse to not touch him, wasn't she? "I…uh, I picked up…um…nemberfarger fever on…uh…this uncharted planet…um…Jinkertam. Yeah. It's deadly to Drell. Dang."

That would not work.

When she finally decided to face the consequences of masquerading as an Alpha in the presence of someone with no interest in pack dynamics, she opened her eyes. Thane licked the brightly colored frosting off his fingertip, making her swallow hard and tense her thighs involuntarily for a sprint.

He stepped back and leaned against a wall, enough distance to ease her desperately hammering heart. He seemed amused but not condescending as he said gently "Breathe, Siha. Face me as you would a Vorcha with a flame thrower."

There was that word again. Siha. She said as calmly as she could manage, but there was still a quaver to her voice "I am. My pulse is elevated when I blow out their tanks."

His smile widened in appreciation and then faded to a contemplative gaze. He said "I owe you an apology. I am not a danger to you personally or to your command. This is not about me applying pressure. I hope to mitigate pressure."

An apology? She still could not imagine…mitigate pressure? Like blowing off steam? No. NO. Still panicked, she listened, not willing to ask any questions or get tangled in her own curiosity.

He continued "I owe you an apology for being inappropriately intrigued about your life. I have done a great deal of illegal and intrusive research."

Oh. Oh no.

He said with regret in his voice "I obtained records of your rescue from Mindoir. I have obtained the records of your parents' lives before they traveled there. Your name is Cara Fanning. You do not have amnesia, nor did you ever have it. I have bugged your cabin. Garrus Vakarian is bonded to you and you are in love with him, but you cannot announce or celebrate your relationship due to political concerns."

Oh. OH NO.

"After your rescue on Mindoir you constructed a persona for yourself that is appropriate to command, while maintaining a private personality that while utterly charming, is hidden from those that surround you. I wished to learn more of you in hopes of convincing you to overcome any objection you might have had to having a relationship with me. I continued because you presented a unique mystery and challenge. I owe you my gratitude and Councilor Vakarian a debt I cannot repay. I regret treating you as an object of speculation and I regret subjecting you to sexual objectification." 

Oh…she squeezed her eyes shut at that. She did not want an explanation. She held up a hand while hiding her face and croaked "Don't…please. I can't…don't tell me about that last thing. Please. I can get money. I can arrange for a bribe." She couldn't look at him. She definitely did not want to imagine what…he meant. Her mind supplied her with a vivid image of Thane masturbating, helpfully, and she bit down on the lining of her cheek. Now did she have to apologize for sexually objectifying him? No. He'd described it…he…

She chanted 'nononononono' internally in the tradition of saying 'lalalalalala.' It was too late to consider running, no strength left in limbs, no balance left, just swirling embarrassment, rooted to her position.

"In an attempt to confess and atone, I offer my arm beyond professional service. I propose protecting you. Knowing what I know of military tradition and your interaction with current squad mates, your command persona is warranted. I applaud your adoption of that cover. I attribute a great deal of your success to your ability to read people and situations, to be the person needed to maintain authority. Unfortunately as a side effect of that effort, you have created an enigma and an attractive cipher in Shepard, and you cannot afford to explain why you are not interested to those that grow more persistent. Much of my curiosity was provoked by your obvious signs of physical attraction, juxtaposed with your retreat without giving a reason. I was intrigued. Others have been and will be intrigued, but you are involved with Garrus Vakarian and do not wish, nor would you consider another relationship."

She was a mess, but she could follow. He didn't need to ask. He knew. He was giving her the opportunity to confirm. She said hoarsely "Yes. And I knew…I knew you might find out. I knew…someone would find out. I wanted to…I knew." She subsided, a knot of anxiety.

"I accept your conclusion of not desiring a relationship as absolute and final. To atone for violating your privacy, I propose providing you with a plausible shield from any further such attentions. Having discovered your aptitude for subterfuge, I suggest extending it cooperatively. I believe if we undertake the fiction of presenting ourselves as lovers, you will be spared others approaching you. I will protect you from that, leaving you with personal privacy on the Normandy, freedom to move on the Citadel and a distraction to the media which would divert attention from your relationship with the Councilor. You would have the opportunity to spend time here on the Citadel, unobserved, in this apartment, which would be my gift to you. This apartment has an entrance Councilor Vakarian could use without being discovered. You and I would enter from the public entrance, he could visit you unseen. Any media that wish to find you here will find me here, and I will deal with their presence."

She stared at him, her jaw having dropped during that delivery, and then she started to laugh, a little bit hysterically, with a sobbing wobble to the sound. She stopped laughing before it ramped up to truly hysterical. She put her head in her hands, the resurgent flush of red under her skin prickling and spreading. After what she knew was too long she tilted her head back and sighed. She stared at him, speechless. He commented drily "You are certainly not averse to lying. I could help you get as good at it in your private life as you are in your professional life."

She closed her eyes. Intellectually and strategically she could grasp, understand…but emotionally there were so many baseline things that she had to clarify before…before anything. She said "I didn't think it was possible to be this embarrassed. I'm…very…uncomfortable with the idea that your arm belongs to me. Both of your arms should belong to you. You should be spending time with Kolyat."

Thane answered reasonably "Kolyat as yet does not wish to spend all of his time with me. Perhaps he never will. That is his choice, not something you or I could or should influence other than providing opportunity and support."

Now she wanted to stand, pace, rant, blow off the crawling energy from under her skin. She aimed for Shepard, but her idealism came out like a released jet of water that had been held under pressure. "Thane…you're his father. You're dying. I recruited you because you sheltered Salarians in Dantius Towers, because I knew Nassana had earned death many times over." She told herself 'Don't say that he glowed.' He was in fact, still glowing. She didn't doubt him. She didn't mistrust him. That was earned and also with an overlay of faith. Once again she couldn't explain, but she trusted whatever instinct contributed to glowing. "If I had known about you as a person, what you have confided in me, I would never have recruited you. Would you consider please retiring somewhere dry and warm? As an alternate personal favor?"

He was oddly touched, but shook his head and said with finality "No."

She sighed, but felt better galloping in a different direction that didn't include the subject of sex. "I don't want to criticize Drell tradition, but I'm going to criticize Drell tradition. You were raised in stylized slavery. I don't want to prolong that mode of thinking. You offering me everything…turning your life into a lie…I can't. I'd be taking advantage."

Thane blinked with double lids slowly, watched and listened as she redirected the conversation. He was somewhat stung to have the topic changed to his…lack of agency over his own life…? It was preposterous. She might as well have accused him of being a Volus in a Drell suit. His mind struggled to reconcile the woman willing to pay him to not discuss her body's response to him and the woman who concerned herself with the feelings of a hardened and determined assassin who had just admitted to something that should make her want to kill him. The idea that she could…take advantage? He had met Commander Shepard. He had even met Lal. He had not yet met Cara, only observed her. Cara's response to being unveiled was not to insist upon being Shepard, but to insist upon herself. He said carefully to clarify, disbelieving this could be the case "You have concerns regarding my free will and ability to consent?"

She nodded emphatically, her eyes bright "You lived a life where your free will was taken and your consent was given for you."

"That may have once been true, but my arm has been my own for years."

She tilted her head and spoke in debate-team style, something he'd seen her do while formulating strategy in the field, now bright with personal passion and conviction that matched Shepard's tactical appraisal. Her shyness fled when dealing with points of logic and not points of person, although this was a point of logic regarding his person "My will having priority over yours amounts to extended battle sleep, where your Spirit does not guide you. You have often introduced yourself or referred to yourself as 'my' weapon. I know now that is not metaphoric or poetic. To you that is literal. To me that is unacceptable. I am against slavery. You are not mine."

He mitigated the incendiary impact of the word slavery by considering context. She did not think of him or treat him as a slave. This was perhaps not about her ownership of his arm, but his practice of giving his arm. Had he bound his will as fully to another as he had to hers, he could potentially be an instrument of mindless destruction. He had known Shepard's record before dedicating his life. His life also had meant less at the time. Would he have bound himself so fully to someone else? He doubted he could convince her that the answer was no. In his early career, he had been unconcerned with the nature of his target or the will that aimed him. He had been trained to excise curiosity in what led his handlers to choose a target while giving him the tools to explore all avenues of curiosity. He no longer limited his curiosity, clearly. Perhaps not clear to her. He focused on her transformation from shrinking shyness to impassioned virago, wishing to sustain it. As a distraction he said warmly "I am yours, but perhaps not in the way you wish, or not in a way you understand. Yet. Let us explore that. Please come with me, I would like a cup of tea."

He turned and she rose and followed, the numbness fading from her limbs with movement, but her pulse still pounding. She followed him quietly and then lost herself to envy and lust.

The kitchen…

Oh. Oh. The KITCHEN…was beautiful. She recalled him saying that this apartment would be his gift to her. He had not said this was 'his' apartment. He said he owned it, but he wasn't giving an apartment to her that had been his, he was giving her something tailored to her, down to the last seductive detail. From what she'd seen, Thane's diet consisted of mostly raw fruit. He'd have no use for a kitchen this elaborate, his tastes markedly more Spartan. He'd done his research and decided that if his body was an insufficient enticement…this would do.

Her coveting heart chimed in that he was not wrong.

Beautiful streamlined appliances, warm colors in soft peach and golden wood tones, simulated skylights streaming in warm, mellow light that glinted on shining copper-colored fixtures. She recognized gadgets she'd wanted to try…

She grinned as he busied himself with making Drell tea in a high-tech infuser she would love to examine, use over and over…the array of teas and coffees, chocolates, beverages from a dozen worlds, some she knew to be ridiculously expensive, things she'd never get for herself, or might manage once a year as a guilt-inducing extravagance. She said appreciatively "Trap…"

He shrugged, not looking at her, addressing his simple cup of Drell tea, avoiding the more elaborate brew possibilities. He said with a touch of knowing reveal "Elaborately baited."

She acknowledged that, and said "You should have opened with this."

He took a small sip and said "I did offer. You declined. I am willing to clarify, but not insist. That is how this will work, Siha."

Predictably her heart hammered and he smiled at her over the rim of his cup, unspoken appreciation that he had that effect on her.

She leaned against a counter, looked at him. So this was Thane in his natural habitat. Nestled amid temptation that if he did not manage one way he would manage another. She bowed and shook her head, swamped. He pulled out a chair at a rich polished wooden table adorned with a bowl of fruit, some human, some Asari, some Drell…and she got sidetracked by wanting to know what they were. She forced herself back to the bizarre moment, sat down when she realized he wouldn't leave her side until she did. He sat at the opposite end. She could feel the bubbling questions, tentative freedom to ask thousands of things. Was this Drell architecture? Who decorated it? What was that purple fruit? What kind of wood is this? She stayed quiet, clamping back down with habitual pressure to keep her tongue and mind from exploding. She breathed.

He said "I have considered your objections. Let me attempt to restate your point of view to be certain I have understood it. In prior conversation with you I stated I chose to be trained, yet my training began at the age of six. That circumstance cannot legally be described as me giving consent. My parents consented. I was a young child, idealistically, socially and religiously convinced of the correct course I should take by my community, by the Hanar and by my parents. I did not understand what it entailed. I did not understand the social pressures that demanded it. I only knew I was given a privilege and I had no response other than gratitude. On reflection, there was no point where I was given the opportunity to refuse, nor did I consider refusal. I was dutiful and diligent, possibly some of the attributes that caused me to be chosen. I was ultimately easily molded, and I took well to my training. Perhaps my aptitude, success and sense of duty caused me to believe I consented. I did not. Is that accurate?"

"Yes. I know it's human-centric. I don't know Drell attitudes, but in human culture, children are not considered to have legal consent, and certain things are abuse. In your case, forced labor. In addition, you were trained to evade the law and commit murder. Unless you can educate me, I can't see it any other way."

He did not fundamentally disagree with her on that point. He continued "My training was in fact idealistic, socially and religiously freighted with coercion and abuse. However the Compact began, it has become predatory, and I believe it needs to end."

She said quickly "Then do that. That is what your Spirit wills."

He shook his head and said "That would be incomplete understanding of my Spirit. If you wish to understand about my life, you need only ask, I will tell you. Your curiosity is something you are forced to suppress. I will stipulate that my training and my early career while under Hanar handling was not a matter of consent, but coercion. This is not to say I did not take deep pride in it. I did. I do. Whatever limited choices I had, I made the most of them."

She looked at him, eyebrows drawn and voice soft "How many choices did you have?" 

"I could have refused to serve. Once I was at the age of adult consent by Drell or human terms, I could have escaped and not reported back. I had been trained to evade. I could certainly evade Hanar, who needed me to do what they could not. I did not. I thrived on the training, I enjoyed the status. I cannot change my upbringing. You cannot change yours. You had your family and social support taken from you at the age of sixteen. You thrived on the training, you enjoyed the status. Would that be incorrect?"

"No. That's true."

"The Hanar instilled in me that I had no right to my own name or to my family. I served the Drell, I served the Hanar, I served the Gods, and I carried a burden, a debt, not of my own making. The debt was and is real. My people nearly destroyed themselves. Yes, the Compact resembles slavery, but many Drell live free lives, and would not had the Hanar not intervened. Without them I would not exist. The Compact asked me to pay the price of life and freedom for many. I did so willingly." He considered his words for a moment as he shifted from speaking as an authority about himself, to speaking about his impressions of her "What was it that made you choose to change your name?"

"I knew Mindoir was considered a place that was bordering on cult. I did not agree. I did not want to defend or explain. I wanted to forget. It's what my parents would have wanted, for me to not dwell on the ugly, remember them as they were, not as I last saw them. I believed reporters or interviewers would only ever associate the name of Mindoir with the tragedy and not the real place. Lal is a name my father called me. Shepard is a reminder that I came from an innocent place, and the worlds do not reward innocence, it is preyed upon. I value innocence. I value what my parents made there. There was nothing wrong about where I grew up, there was only something wrong with the Batarian slavers. I could only preserve my views, what they gave me, by hiding them. When the Batarian ships approached I was too far away from the settlement to do anything meaningful. I knew they were slavers because of a wanted bulletin. I had an Omni Tool but my parents didn't, they were too expensive. The settlement sent a distress call, and I did the same, but there were no Alliance ships near. I knew my parents would fight and would die. If I had approached I would have been seen. By the time night fell the Batarians had already gathered up all the colonists and were sorting their cargo. I could tell that humans were a secondary concern to what was in the silos. If a human resisted, they died with sadistic brutality. Survival was more about luck. Even after the population had been subdued, before they were loaded onto the freighter they could die to a sudden shot to the head, being beaten to death, rape. The Batarians established that human life was abundant and expendable. Seeing how the Batarians operated, any plan I tried to formulate to save lives I knew would ultimately fail and backfire. It would result in me dying and whoever I tried to save dying, others would die as a result of the delay and the defiance. There were no lone Batarians to pick off; they traveled in well armed packs. There were no stray humans to rescue, all well guarded and corralled while waiting to be loaded on. I reached my burned home, found my parents and the three Batarians they'd killed after the colonists had all been rounded up. I hid. To a greater or lesser extent I've been doing that ever since."

He'd seen Batarian slavers in action. He'd killed many of them. Drell were a prized target. Her assessment of their methods and understanding of consequence at the age of sixteen was only believable through association with her as an adult. "I have done research on your family. I have found no living relatives, but I do have documentation of your parents. If you wish to see it, I will give it to you."

"I looked for them, I couldn't find them."

"They changed their names."

"Yes, I would like to see that, please. I don't have…anything of theirs."

"You speak to them?"

"All the time."

"Whatever I have found is yours to see. I have the only copy of your interview after rescue. You were recorded."

She closed her eyes. "I didn't know, I didn't grow up with recordings …I didn't understand."

"I do not believe that from what I learned of Mindoir or your parents that they were religiously biased or foolish. Although I do not have the right to it, I would choose to honor their memory as well, and prefer that it was not lost, though I understand your need to hide them. You must understand that based on the illegal liberties I have taken, and what you have done for Kolyat, I owe you my life."

She shook her head and said "You don't. Under my command, of course with your life on the line, with so many lives on the line, who I am as a person would matter. With your ability to observe, with my tragic inability to…tell the truth about certain things like pounding hearts and blushing, there's no wonder you did what you did. I'm sorry I pushed you to it. If you'd asked me…"

"You would have lied."

She said with a short self deprecating laugh "I would have lied. Your curiosity was justified not only as a personal concern, but that I might be indoctrinated, that I might have…come back not quite right from resurrection. So many possibilities. 'Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.' You are watchful. Given the amount of…inconsistency you personally experienced, I'd have probably wanted to do the same thing, but I don't have your skill set."

Gratified and touched, he steered the conversation back to her objection to his…inability to consent. He said "So we were both then taken from our families without consent. You knew it was without your consent. I believed it was with mine. You did what you did with your remaining choices in order to protect what was important to you. I did what I did with my remaining choices to protect what was important to me. Regardless of my age, regardless of your age, both too young to truly understand the implications of what we did, we still chose. You chose to conceal your family. I chose to honor Drell debt with my life. The memory of your parents drives you to save lives. The memory of Drell failure and Hanar rescue drove me to take lives. Would that be correct?"

She thought a moment, and said "That phrase…regardless of your age…I can't just dismiss it in the same way. The people of Mindoir had their consent absolutely taken. They had control chips implanted. I did not. What if the manner of your training resulted in the equivalent of a control chip? You offer unquestioned obedience, no attachment to what I ask you to do. How is that different from you having a control chip and me providing the order for your action?"

"I did not grant you unquestioned obedience or we would not be having this conversation. This is a result of me pursuing you, someone I wanted, someone I planned to stalk. I planned to find weaknesses in you and exploit them. I wished to protect you from everyone and everything but me. I was aware you resisted the idea, had I been fully your arm, I would have abided by that. It had to do with wanting you in my bed. In discovering I could not have a relationship, the urge to protect you remained, and the number of threats you faced were extensive. What if the imprint of your parents controls you? What if the imprint of military service controls you? You bear them both, deep and incontrovertible. No reasonable argument of death or failure will make you change your course."

It wasn't fair, but she ignored her blush, ignored pursuing lust as proof of will. That was a hunger, and had nothing to do with who she was, only who he'd thought her to be. That was her fault. He'd pursued meals and sleep also. She pressed on "But I chose my path, Thane. Nobody chose it for me. I have been…alone on that path for the majority of my life now. Plenty of time to change my mind."

He sorted through that and said "Let me say what you are too polite to say. Your path is righteous and always has been. All that you required to choose it was the will and the courage. My path is not the same. Your curiosity and ethical compass are essential to who you are. In contrast, my Path, my mind was free of ethical judgment and curiosity. Meeting Irikah changed that. Meeting you changed that further. Now I have adopted ethical judgment and curiosity as tools to use to better choose targets. I have learned and adapted what I chose to keep from my training and what I chose to discard."

Her brows drew together and she said "But what if they are not a part of you any longer because they were taken from you before you knew what they were? What if you still don't know what ethical judgment and curiosity could mean to you?"

He set his cup aside, leaned on the table, hands steepled "You believe that if I were more like you, my life would be better. However, we are here because there is a need in your life that distresses you, and in order to fulfill gaining privacy for yourself, you must either be more like me or you require my services. There are things you can learn from me. Things that do not spring from your intellect or Spirit. They are of value tactically in order to preserve political options while allowing you to still be a person, and a person in love. Do not equate the ability to make a choice with it always resulting in the morally correct choice. I have not spent my life pursuing the goal of being a good person. I made choices that resulted in staying alive. I made choices that added to my status, to my ego, choices that achieved what I wanted for myself. Perhaps not the best use of consent, but it does qualify as consent. You require people like me to kill for you. There is a need, that need is rewarded handsomely. My consent led to reward, not ethical superiority."

She said wryly "So I'm not only human-centric but Shepard-centric."

He said softly "As you should be."

She smiled and said "I'm…thank you. I'm sorry for judging. This is why I…well, you don't need to have this in your head."

He shook his head and said "I wish to know your thoughts. I have not earned it, but I aspire to be your friend. If I cannot attain that, I aspire to give you what time and privacy you need to be a Whole person, to do your job. It cannot be done by another. You could be protected by another, but I wish to claim that privilege. You sharing your thoughts has meaning beyond the thoughts themselves. You should not apologize for not being the one to say that I have lived a selfish life. I was the one to point it out."

She looked at him, quietly assessing and said "I will not lead you in a selfish direction."

"You attempted to, I refused. Perhaps less selfishness and more ethical clarity is what I need now in my life. More than somewhere dry and warm. Let me retell the story of me meeting Irikah in order to display consent, display how choices were made, display selfishness. Upon reflection, analysis and understanding of that moment, this is what I know of myself. Ego and lust drove me, drove my choices. Mundane things I dressed as revelation and love. I granted Irikah divinity by proxy. I believed that if Arashu guided me and I was her Blessed, only one guided by Arashu would dare interfere. Beyond what I saw, beyond what I felt, I must with distance and memory examine what I did."

"Thane, you don't have to…I'm sorry…"

He looked at her distress and smiled, saying gently "You told the story of Mindoir. I will tell mine, to set your heart more at ease. Whether or not I was a slave, I am no longer."

She subsided and nodded.

"My choice was not only about Irikah, but about the unknowing man who walked by, whose targeting she spoiled. I fell at Irikah's feet, listened to her speak, believed her to be from Arashu Herself, and yet…her words, which I believed would be divine, were not. She was still a gentle, beautiful and loving Drell woman and I wanted her. Without Irikah's knowledge, defying any sense that she was a messenger from Arashu to turn me from my Path, I stalked and killed the target Irikah had intended to protect, had believed I spared. I did not confess my action, did not fear her judgment in a divine sense. I knew her to be a woman without omniscience, who would never know. In this moment it was my ego and Path that mattered, that sang. I did not fear the Gods, I did not fear the Hanar, I did not fear Irikah. I chose a new Path. I wished to express new things. I wished my freedom. I wanted a woman of beauty and character. Irikah could not alter my nature. More importantly, despite my dedication, I could not alter my nature. I was only able to redirect it." He looked at her and said "I am not certain you have had any length of time spent away from your chosen Path, barring your death. Have you?"

She quirked a smile and said "Other than shore leave spent avoiding responsibility, no. By the end of the shore leave, as much as I would have loved to stay and continue to play at whatever I was doing…I knew it was play. I always know I need to get back to work."

He nodded and said "My work was what I knew I needed to get back to. It was a need I tried to deny but a need nonetheless. Not only the urge to maintain skills and test them against trial, but the need for the financial reward. I do not know if I loved Irikah in the beginning, if it was love and not merely lust at first sight. I did and do know I was not good enough for her. I believe I love her now, I believe she held my heart in her hands and it beat for her. I believe what began as ego and lust grew to me honoring her, wanting to deserve her, wanting to earn the right to be by her side. I will struggle with deserving her until I see her face by the Shores and hear that she has forgiven me, my trials and tests over. Each time I left I missed her voice, her laugh, her smile, her body by mine, but between work I grew restless. I would find work, take difficult contracts with high payouts. I would fulfill my purpose, I would return to her, having earned the right. That is what my perfect life was to me. I had a beautiful, extraordinary wife, a healthy son, and a purpose. I perhaps cannot explain how those two opposite worlds led from one to the other and back again in a cycle I needed, where each step in each world had meaning. I was able to keep her in comfort, I was able to aid her family, buy homes and pay medical bills for Kepral's sufferers. If I stayed at home, idle, watching destitution in the community that I could do nothing about…I knew…I could make her life better. I chose my targets with care. There was a grim satisfaction in killing people who deserved to die. If I had your mind, I might have known there was nothing I could have done to save Irikah, as you knew there was nothing you could do to save your parents."

"Then use my mind. If your arm is pledged to my service, the least I can do is give you my mind. You never wished harm on Irikah or Kolyat, you loved them, you love them. The people you hunted…the people that killed her…they wanted to do you as much damage as possible. Don't let them. Take the memory of her back. If she is by the Shores, she knows who killed her, and she knows it was not you. She knew that in her last moments and I imagine her deepest sorrow was for you and Kolyat, not her own pain. My parents knew Mindoir was dangerous. They did it anyway. Who they were together was beautiful and braver than I am now. I want that for myself someday, if I ever can, to spend time with my bond mate without counting every fear. To dance, to bake bread, to laugh. To create. To spend a full day on creation and not offense or defense. I haven't been able to be that brave, I live between the world without them and the world they created, but I need what they created to remember…people like them deserve their dreams. People like them are the ones that make the worlds better places. They created their own personal heaven and I lived in it. It wasn't a lie. It wasn't a mistake. If I can't live a dream anymore, I can…still…have faith that the worlds can be better places, that I can do that with what they gave me. Who you and Irikah and Kolyat were together was and is beautiful. Irikah knew she was vulnerable, she chose to love you anyway. She was not a fool, not a victim. She was brave. She has her own Spirit, her own choices. She wouldn't blame you any more than my parents would want me to remember only the smoke of Mindoir. You had years with her, they were your best life. My best life was on Mindoir. It's over, but it shouldn't be forgotten or overwritten because the end was brutal. The end was out of our hands. I have no doubt you tried to protect Irikah, and they found a way around your efforts. Mindoir was building up defense but the Batarians knew what remaining holes there were in coverage to exploit. We would never want it to end, would never choose to be cast out of heaven. Evil people did something brutal because you fought back against them. You had a life worth living, a love worth feeling. She loved you. I don't want to apply human-centric ideas like heaven here, I don't believe in human heaven, but it matters what you believe. If she is by the Shores, she still loves you. She does not want to see you suffer. Your son, whether or not he is angry at you, chose to follow a path you followed because he wanted to feel connected to you. If I did have the ability to override your judgment, maybe it would be best used here. Allow Irikah's life to stand, to mean more than her death. Give her back her choices. Give her back the fact that she loved you, knew you as you were and wanted a life with you enough to take all the risks she took to be with you. Believe she would do it again. She knew that she, that everyone, faces the possibility of brutal loss, and they still choose. You blame yourself, and that blame keeps you from feeling connected to her. Don't let what they did take her from you."

He stared at her, his own flush of embarrassment, of vulnerability on his face, in his voice. His own heart pounding in his ears. He said solemnly "I will try. You sound…like her. I believe you could speak for her. Thank you. It is a Drell thought but it seems to apply to at least one human. Some people are born with a fire burning, a fire that when nurtured and built can blaze bright enough to set them apart, make them special. Your talent is strategy. My talent is death. Irikah's talent is love. You are right and I have focused on the fact that she could not change my nature…but I did not change hers either. She was love every moment that I was blessed to spend with her. Had I been given Irikah's life, I believe I would still have been chosen as tribute, because even by six years old it burned. Had Irikah been born a farmer on Mindoir she would have loved her family, attempted to defend others from overwhelming force and died during the invasion, or been taken for a slave. Had you been born on Kahje, you would have not been chosen as tribute because of your unbiddable personality, your insistence on self…" He trailed off, smiled wryly, looking at her with a mockingly censuring raised brow ridge, she laughed.

"Your strategic capacity would still burn. You would find a way to protect people, observation of injustice would move you to it. I submit Spirit, Siha, not consent. The nature of who we are, persisting through all circumstances, guiding us when others would see choices and we see no choice. A Path. A Rightness. Unbroken and incontrovertible. Irikah's fire burns still, in my heart, in Kolyat's. You are right. It does not matter if I believe myself undeserving, to honor her I must honor who she truly was, that she would love me and honor her oath to me, that she chose to do so with her own will...which was extraordinary, as you say, and not a miscalculation. I was not pulled from my nature by Irikah. I will not be pulled from my nature by you. Neither of you would be influenced by me in a way that would deny your nature. Through both of you, I can better apply my nature. I can place it in the service of a greater vision. You cannot take a word like consent and carve me into pieces, weigh each and determine whether or not more of me or less of me understands what I do. I should not take Irikah's death, carve that moment up, feel that weight only and allow that to define me or her. She was a Whole person, like your parents. She would be the first to forgive. I will try to hear that in her voice. I do not know if I can, but I shall try. You perhaps had no choice in joining the military, having been enrolled in a military academy after your rescue, after you were severed from your family. At some point you could have. You could have returned to Mindoir, you could have, with your mind, gained admission to any route of higher learning. You did not. You chose the default Path of military to be your dedicated Path. Why?"

"They saved my life. I don't have…or didn't have…a person to share my life with. I had a cat. I had my training. I had the memory of Mindoir simultaneously letting me know that innocence was of infinite value, and that things of infinite value were hunted. I wasn't brave enough to start a life of only innocence, so I became a hybrid. I kept my memories and began a new life as a hunter."

"You were and are good at it. That is your indefinable Spirit, your fate. In terms of being able to see the truth of Collectors and Reapers the best at it. You see the necessity. You pay the price each day to not express your personal wishes, but to serve a greater purpose. With each person you protect, it feeds your Spirit, guides and lights your Path. You enjoy baking, and although it appears you are passable and passionate, I doubt you experience the full ringing genius of who you are until there is a life on the line and not a meringue."

She said with mock offense "Meringues are hard to make. I still can't get them right. I've tried."

The corner of his mouth lifted in a smile in response "You asked me to retire to somewhere warm and dry. In a lifetime spent pursuing reward, I will tell you no without need to think about it. It is not my Path. My Path is by your side. I offer to buy you a bakery, Siha, to give you an opportunity to take a selfish path after a lifetime of service. Would you accept?"

She tilted her head and said "No. My meringue dream will go unfulfilled."

"It would delight some part of you, but deny your fate its Path. You would see the news. You would be drawn from helplessness to competence."

Parsed that way…yes, she understood. Beyond that…she…was understood, or he was trying. It mattered. But… "Those choices you describe as unwise, as selfish, would you take whatever illumination I have provided and make a different choice than pledging me your arm? Knowing what you know, would you destroy the Compact instead of Reapers? Maybe you don't come back and Kolyat regrets that he was unable to overcome a lifetime of resentment in order to spend precious time with you. I need to know you're at least free to think about staying with him. I need you to know I think you should. By your argument, this is my Path, not yours."

He tried to consider what she asked. He did not give her a no immediately. "I will reflect upon that. Thank you for the consideration of my greater good. It is appreciated. Much of what you say here, I must meditate upon. Kolyat has only one father, and there are many that could walk by your side. However, I am already here. I already know you. I have never let a job go unfulfilled. It is not my nature. I care about you. I cannot step aside because you believe me to potentially be interchangeable with someone else. Removing Drell terminology, instead of giving you my arm without my Spirit, I offer both. I believe following your orders would result in a greater good. It would be action in service of innocent life. Kolyat's life. Your life. I could regain Irikah's regard. I could take pride in my action, return home to her having earned the right to stand by her once again, as I did when she was alive, this time coming to her by the Shores penitent and of service. I could gain Kolyat's respect. I could gain your friendship. If I follow your urging to step aside, if I live out my short life, he and I drink tea together, but because I was not at your side, we all fall to Reapers. I would certainly die from Kepral's knowing his life was at further risk and I did nothing to preserve it when I could have." He smiled and then said "I have not lost my ego as part of my decisions. Perhaps if I were truly selfish, I would take him with me and hide. I will not. Likely you would prefer to never have Batarians attack Mindoir, to have your parents back, to be the daughter you wished to be. You would be a farmer on Mindoir that would die in a Reaper invasion. A happy life, a quiet life of contemplation and beauty. Would you choose to condemn the galaxy to that, knowing what you know?"

She was silent. She had sought clarity but they had achieved immeasurable complication. In the end she had to trust to his judgment or override it, and she would not override his will. He knew that well enough. It would be the height of logical fallacy to insist he has his own will, then when he expressed it, tell him he was wrong.

He watched her face and said after her prolonged silence said "You accepted my service in Dantius Towers, but you wish to return me to myself?"

"I do. Not only did I not know about your life, but the circumstances of your life have drastically changed. Kolyat came back into your life."

"Kolyat came back into my life because you arranged for that to be so. Your interference in my chosen fate made that possible. Had you not pursued me, I would likely be dead. Had you not offered me a path that had a greater use for my skill than I was able to secure for myself, I would not have thought myself a potential solution to Kolyat's impulsive choice. Had I survived Dantius Towers I still might have fatalistically accepted his death as I have accepted the loss of my ancestors, as I accepted Irikah's death, as I have accepted Kepral's. You…are the factor that changed my Path. You gave me the example of willingness to fight when all seems lost, on a greater scale than I had imagined. What I encountered later on my continuing path is still a result of your presence in my life."

She said with a tight throat, unable to understand what could drive a person to suicidal action, unwilling to imagine it in him "You…wanted to die that day."

"Yes. Before encountering you I had nothing to offer Kolyat but more death and lies. It is your light on that Path, your hope, your unwavering…in fact unreasonable but compelling…faith that allowed me to believe that I could change Kolyat's path, as you had changed mine. Whether or not you believe it to be so, your presence overrode my set will. You denied me the death I sought, you denied me the choice I'd made regarding Kolyat's freedom from my mistakes. Your introduction to my life was and will be a defining and resounding change in my outlook. I believed you to be the woman you presented yourself to be for long enough that I did not question your presentation until later…until I…cared enough to ask some questions."

"What questions?"

He smiled "Where did brownies come from? Why was there flour on your workout clothes? In essence…I followed the frosting. Beyond my attraction to you personally I became intrigued, fascinated by the disparity between your command philosophy and your inner life. Once Councilor Vakarian was known to be involved with you and also inherent in Kolyat's preservation, I wished to learn more of him, of both of you. I owe him a debt as well. I will also admit that it is rare to express attraction to anyone and have it go unreciprocated."

She laughed and said, teasing "More ego. You spied on me because I spurned you?"

He smiled and said with reciprocal teasing "No, you did not spurn me. You are attracted to me."

She sighed and said "Yeah. Sorry about that. Can't seem to make it stop." You glow. If anybody understood mysterious fascination, it was her. "I am sorry that compelling Shepard is unavailable and shy Cara is also…unavailable."

His voice hardened, but in emphasis, not anger "Do not believe that I am no longer attracted to you. In all honesty I am more attracted. I will not act on it, but do not doubt that it is there."

She swallowed, hard, thinking he was being polite, still affected at the…courtly insistence. Heart pounding. Again.

He noticed that she did not look directly at him, and he allowed it for the moment, curious about her response and not willing to sidetrack her. He would insist. Later. She needed to know, desperately, that who she was could be loved, should be loved, was loved. He needed to tell her. It seemed he needed to hear it as well, not only from the woman before him, but from the woman behind him, whose enshrined memory denied her the love and hope she had embodied.

She continued, softer but clear "Even if I were not involved with Garrus…I still would not be able to be involved with you. Irikah waits for you by the Shores. I have religious or perhaps spiritual beliefs of my own. I believe you married a woman and that vow matters. All stages of that vow. Making it. Breaking it. Repairing it. You both committed to it being eternal. From the way you describe her, you honor her memory each day. If she were still here she would be at your side…if you allowed it. Your faith is broken, but not faith in her. Your faith in yourself is broken. If you could repair faith in yourself, your connection to her could be a source of joy and not pain. I can't help but think of my parents. I hear their voices every day. They loved me. I can't say goodbye to them. I want that for you, that you could hear her voice, enjoy her presence every day. If you had died before her, she would have remained true to her promise. I believe in what my parents had together. I want that. I could never…come between you and Irikah. I can see that you loved her, I can see from the stories you tell that she loved you. Maybe other people don't see it that way. I think you do. I know I do."

"Then that is the truth I wish to honor. There are ways beyond erotic love that I could express what you have given to me. I wish to honor change in my mundane life. You…we…have set a meaningful trajectory. You have given me a possible path to forgiveness, to restoration to my family. Possibly Kolyat and I will make more mistakes, as seems to be our habit. Possibly we will succeed in growing closer. Nothing I could give to you in this life could reflect the gratitude I feel for that opportunity. To provide you with a refuge in this apartment, to provide you with a friend, a companion, even the fiction of a watchful and jealous lover. Though it is based upon a lie, it is still a functional and meaningful action. You would have your privacy restored to you, something I stole, something I will prevent others from stealing."

She looked around and said "Can I buy the apartment from you?"

He shook his head with finality "Gift. By tomorrow it will be in your name."

She pressed her lips together and said "It's too much."

"Not from my perspective. My life will benefit from my friendship with you. This conversation has convinced me that future conversations are something I desire, something I can have. But I will not place a burden upon your time if you do not wish it. Were you to monopolize my time, that is how I would wish to spend it. I am not compelled. There are things that are owed that are painful in execution. This would not be painful. I would in fact enjoy your company, enjoy protecting you. I admire you and I wish to further your goals, ease your Path, as you have done for me. I do this because I trust your goals, your dedication and your Spirit. Regardless of whether or not there is an eternity to be anticipated, this is how I wish to spend my remaining time, the wisest choice I could make with my circumstances."

She took a deep breath, said "You pledged your arm originally until the mission of the Collectors was over. We join our Paths until then. If we live…please…Thane…spend what time you have remaining with Kolyat. I…you feeling you would make a difference in the mission…to me…it is not ego. I need you. I know I need you."

He knew his body would deteriorate further. He was facing death soon either way. It was an easy promise to set her mind at ease. He did not want her to have to watch him lose his breath. "Very well. I will guard you, Siha. I promise it. Allow me to walk with you, I will be your arm in battle, I will be your shield in life. Irikah was…is still…a remarkable woman. You need not feel guilty for the deception. She would…find it amusing. We shall entertain her as she watches from the Shores. I owe her my fidelity, broken but with my hope to repair it, rededicate myself to a woman I feared severed from me from my own failings. Kolyat may or may not desire my company, but he has seen my face, heard my voice while we still live. He will know I care while I still have life to risk for him. These are gifts you have given to me. Allow me to give back. Collectors and Reapers threaten all life. They are real, not based on religion or faith. These are my choices, my beliefs, not something you compel. My Spirit. My fate. Romantically you will not be keeping me from another partner. There will be no other partner, though I cannot state I have not had other partners since her death. My fidelity, my fatherhood, my focus have been flawed. Whether or not I can be forgiven or redeemed belongs to those I have wronged and to Gods, it is beyond my control, but I can wish to earn it, now and for eternity. I can provide you with companionship, license to be yourself, and guard you in your private life as I would guard you on a mission. Please, Cara, say yes."

A deep spreading warmth of being understood guided her into looking around the kitchen once more, back to him and saying "Yes, Thane Krios, I would be honored to not be involved with you." She smiled at him and then said "Though I really have no idea what I'm agreeing to here. And we have to make sure Garrus doesn't kill you."


	22. Chapter 22

Thane smiled at her concession to his suggestion, pleased to be in theory forgiven and permitted to remain in her crew and presence. Now began the more difficult aspect of the intended Path. He set down his cup and replied "Allow me to set that course. I will speak to Councilor Vakarian. The persona of Shepard is necessary, but the denial of Cara's existence may no longer be required. It may have been necessary for you to conceal your nature entirely years ago, but you may find that the value of your accomplishments will now color people's opinion of you."

She said with a slight lilt of humor "Yeah. People are afraid of me. It's funny. If I screw up, I swear people don't believe it happened. Or they're too afraid to mention it. I've done a good job at making people believe I'd shoot them." She smiled and said "Except with you."

"I am grateful for the opportunity to not be shot. You may relax your military bearing, or you may not, depending on what suits you. Appearing to fall in love may also allow you further latitude socially, as those in love may tend to soften."

"So are Commander Shepard and Thane Krios in love…? Or is she using him for sex?" She immediately buried her head in her hands, blush back even though she'd been attempting to approach comfortable moments before. So much for flippancy.

He took the opportunity to be honest. To insist. He stood from his chair, walked to her and offered his hand. He stood until she lifted her head from her hands and looked at him. His face was intent, not ardent, but still invested with how he felt about her. She swallowed hard, reached her hand out to his, and he pulled her to her feet. He dropped her hand and tilted her chin up with his fingertip when she would not look at him, and she started to tremble. He said "I have been struck twice in my life upon first seeing a woman. Irikah and you. I am pledged to Irikah, I love her. I will devote myself to her. I find the person that you are, the Whole person, mind and Spirit, to be someone I do not wish to resist. I will resist because you require it, because you have shown me I must. But if I were unpledged and you were willing, nothing would stop me from convincing you to belong to me. I would insist that you fall. I believe you think that I am being kind or supportive, that I only found Commander Shepard to my taste. That would be incomplete understanding. I am in love with you. I will never act upon it. But it will not be an act that Thane Krios is in love with Commander Shepard. Love is in your nature. Allow that love to be displayed in my presence and nobody will doubt that Commander Shepard loves Thane Krios."

She had been jittery enough with the theory but the practice was going to be…impossible… Her hands flew to her mouth and she said "You're…you're evil. You just need a brandy snifter and a little dog."

He smiled and said "I have met people that match that description. Many of them are dead, Siha."

Her lips trembled with humor and some admitted terror, but she believed him. This was not an elaborate trap. He was trying to help. He was also aware of his allure and would enjoy flexing. She tried to just look at him, but his words echoed and her humor and comfort melted away. She had what she wanted. He accepted that he was pledged and she was unwilling and this was TERRIBLE.

He took incremental mercy on her. She was panicked and her wide green eyes made him want to pass his fingers over her brow to soothe them, take her in his arms…

No.

His smile was gentle "This is exactly what you must not do when a lover looks at you longingly."

She leaned harder on the table and waved her hand "Okay, okay…it's my first day as a fake lover, grade on a curve!"

"You look as though you wish to run."

"I do! It's just…the kitchen is really nice…and I have a million questions…"

He said with mock stern tone to his voice, but insistent on the basics "There will be time for all questions, I will answer them. However, you must demonstrate that you will allow me to touch you without fainting or running."

She closed her eyes tightly "Maybe don't touch me?"

He leaned in closer, and her eyes flew open, she startled back and did burst into more laughter "I can't…I can't."

He smiled and watched her, thinking he'd be well compensated with the strange joy of watching Commander Shepard blush and stammer. It was satisfying to him personally but would not do before a camera. He asked "Were you involved with Councilor Vakarian before your death?"

Her head jerked up and she said "What? No. I mean, he was interested but I was terrified…uh… He bonded…he bonded to me within the first few minutes of seeing me alive. I didn't really have a choice. I mean, I'm not sorry, but…I can't…uh…no sex. And I haven't ever been involved with anybody before."

Thane blinked, a rush of near blinding anger at Vakarian's presumption before feeling an odd kinship. He'd have done the same with this woman alive and in front of him. He was presuming upon her kindness and trust, had been forgiven himself for unforgivable invasion. He asked carefully "You did not have a choice then. Do you want a choice now?"

She shook her head "No. No, I'm in love with him. I…he knows my name but not that I remember Mindoir, not about my parents. I can't tell him. If he knew…if he knew everything…he'd want me out of the line of fire permanently, and bond just makes that stronger. He wants me safe. I'm making it…difficult…for him to protect me. I told him…after the war. If we live."

That was admirable and understandable…and he was still concerned. Holding off a Turian in full bloom of new bond, being that Turian… He would ask later.

"My main romantic skill seems to be…running away. Or kissing. I'm getting good at kissing."

So Reverie, at least. Bond would progress, had progressed. With her retroactive consent and Vakarian's single minded focus, that was not something he could question. Unconsummated or not, Vakarian's ardor would never lessen, and her promise would stand as long as she lived. He observed "As you wish to do now. Running away, not kissing."

She nodded fervently "As I desperately wish to do now."

"You have made it possible to discover your deception because you are not thorough in your deception. There are trails of flour, and streaks of frosting…and you…squeak…at times…and although you can often disguise your tendency to blush as anger…there is very little chance several intelligent, observant people who live in close quarters together on a starship or reporters will believe I am involved with you if Commander Shepard shrieks and runs away when I look at her or touch her."

She looked down at flawless, lovely tile and beautifully tailored boots and said "Maybe they'll just say I'm in love."

He laughed and said more seriously "No. They will not. They will say I abuse you."

"Maaaybe I'm into that."

"No. You are not. Look at me."

She tried, but everything was too much, and she started to cry, her shoulders slumping and her head falling forward.

He had expected this, tried to avoid it but he knew from watching her private moments that her tears were easy and expressive. He had made her unbearably vulnerable. Perhaps it would not be possible to feign a relationship. Her responses were too honest. She was closer to the root of what she felt than he was and he could possibly not comprehend what it would cost her. There had really been no way to get through this, would be no way through her inner life, her Sanctuary, without tears. He accepted them, as likely from her as her bright eyed smile, both things suppressed in company and loosed randomly and often in solitude.

She was overset, and he lifted her in his arms, carried her back to the sunken living room with a deep comfortable couch, sat down and held her while she cried. He did not put his hands on her skin, he had remained gloved.

She tried to navigate through what had gotten her here, trying to comprehend his vision of a perfect situation where he didn't give her a heart attack every second. She landed in bleary helplessness. She needed him. She didn't want to need him, but she needed him. She wanted him…this…whatever it was, some bizarre compromise to let her cry, someone that knew her, someone that understood her, wasn't pressing in on her. He had been the biggest threat to her, she'd known it, and now her defense was assured because he would enjoy turning away curious or persistent people the same way he enjoyed making her blush.

It also made her crushingly guilty that this is exactly what Garrus wanted to be with her…and she couldn't give it to him. She cried until she got a headache. He held her carefully, loosely, support and patience.

She tried to give him back some of the honesty he'd given her, though his was calm and assured. Her honesty was…not. She said "I'm sorry. You deserve better."

Thane appreciated the momentary ego boost, one he'd never required in the past, some reflection of reassurance that she wasn't impervious to him. Impervious…was a new concept, a new experience, one he would need to embrace, to embody. Proximity to her was connection to hope, reminder of the promises he had made and broken, that he could gather pieces, not lose or smash them further. He could not think of her as a lover, did not truly think of her as a Commander, did not mistake the distinction between childlike and childish, could not think of her as a daughter or a sister. She defied categorization and he had no easy rules to use in human or Drell culture to guide him. To describe her as a friend was not enough. "That is kind of you to say. Still, you will resist any and all attempts at deserving."

She smiled and her voice was a little watery still "I will. Thank you."

He tilted his head toward her and said "You are welcome, Siha. I had not considered that you do not drink alcohol or take recreational drugs. Will my venom be a concern philosophically?"

She shook her head "You're a person. Not a drug."

He clarified "I am a person who has been engineered to be influential and gain access. Sex, violence, persuasion, coercion are my trade. Venom has been my path to those things often."

She scoffed. She trusted him. She said "You got here without it. Thane, you could have shot me, killed me, betrayed me. You got me to walk willingly into your lair and I missed my chance to run. Then you promised me this beautiful place is really my lair. I'm going with it."

He tilted his head back and laughed, his arms tightened around her in affection. She was trying to accept what had happened, that he did not bear the threat of exposure any longer, that it was okay to be attracted to him, that there was a reason he glowed, that he would help her. When his laughter stopped he said "I warn you because it is potentially addictive and has a hypnotic component. This is my venom. Become comfortable with my touch." It was best they did this with her not trying to stand.

She laughed again, nerves and anticipation. A rush of almost battle-like adrenaline, curiosity surging and dawning sense of possible progress on several fronts washed through her. He removed his gloves, held her on his lap, arm around her back to support her. With her hand on her thigh he placed his palm carefully over it. He said "To appear to be lovers, you should anticipate, appreciate my touch, accept it as your due. You will see or hear me coming. If my arm reaches around your waist where others see, I will have given you vocal or physical cue. I will not surprise or startle you intentionally. Touch me as you feel appropriate in return, remember it is to protect you, not entice you."

His words were slow, flowing and mesmerizing as the obvious and startling effect of venom began to move from his skin through hers. His words meandered and sank in with relaxation, acceptance and attention on him, on where their skin touched, on the lesson of his words, which became her focus. Soft light began to spark off his skin, wherever she looked. Not the synesthesia of vibration or glow, because it lacked the importance she associated with it, but a new experience, encompassing and comforting. He said "Cara means dear. There is a Drell word that means 'dear to me,' Lasam. When I call you that, know you are under my protection, I will do you no harm, I will bring you no harm. My arm is my own, as you asked, my fidelity belongs to Irikah, my hope belongs to Kolyat. You are Lasam, someone dear, not of my blood, not of my people, but a person who gave me back my fidelity, my hope."

His venom had a fast effect, she was relaxed, in the state of tiremit. In an average Drell tiremit would be mild intoxication, enhancement of emotional conditions, mildly hallucinatory. With his enhanced venom, it amplified those effects and added a component of more insidious suggestibility, trance and memory loss if he chose. Depending upon starting conditions he could cultivate and enhance whatever emotional state suited his needs. It would be much stronger if she kissed him or licked at his skin, but that he would not expose her to, its more addictive properties causing hunger and then over time withdrawal. Her eyes widened, open and vulnerable. She would be prone to believe his words, and he would make them true for her. She would be suggestible, but not so far that he could tell her to forget completely, and he did not intend that for her. If at all possible he would deal in truths. The telling of truths would cause her no alarm if he primed her for that experience, and the conversation would carry no emotional significance of note. Truths would resemble something tiresomely repetitive and so well known as to raise no suspicion or alarm, quickly forgotten as trivial. It would be as though she were asked to tell him the sky on Earth were blue. She would only be telling him what was widely known, and she would want him to be enlightened by her nature and the flow of the venom in her blood.

When he attempted to brush his fingers over her throat she started to laugh, did her best to lose her balance and fall off even though his arm was around her. She…squeaked. She laughed, then looked at him and said "I'm…I'm a little…okay…a LOT…ticklish."

He smiled back at her and said "Ease your heart, Lasam."

She covered her eyes with a hand and said "I'll try. You're handsome…and kind…and I like your voice…and I'm not running away. That's got to count for something."

He had no idea as yet how to bring this skittish, ticklish, heart-pounding woman to an understanding of how to mimic the appearance of casual acceptance of physical touch. He could suggest but not compel over the stretches of time demanded in an unpredictable circumstance when they would be in public. He could prime her for public appearances but not spontaneous moments.

She could not detect his heart hammering. She was set by her nature and he by his. He reached out, took her hand again with his and said "I shall try to approach you while you are facing away from witnesses. I may need to cover your mouth to prevent squeaking."

She laughed "Think it'll work?"

He thought he, at least would be able to keep up all appearances of being in love with her, and in the end, it was his opinion that mattered on the subject. Some people had determined that Shepard would be no danger to them. That was of course her fear. Cara was inherently harmless, and that threatened Shepard's authority. Harmless was not a word that applied to him. He would territorially claim her as his. He would create more than bluff and warning, he would be a living consequence. Although he would not share her bed, he would share a place in her mind where no one else had gone, not her parents, not her bond mate. He felt diminishing guilt at stealing her truths, because as she had said, innocence was infinite in value and it was hunted. If Thane had not been there, if he had not threatened Orbestan, would Orbestan have harmed her at the Collector base? He was certain enough in the possibility that his guilt sank, replaced by purpose.

He said quietly "It will work, Lasam. We will make it so. I wish to ask you a question, and I know you will answer honestly." More suggestion. His venom would make it difficult for her to be suspicious or to lie. "You speak in your cabin to yourself and you mentioned Councilor Vakarian demanding sex. I wish for you to explain, please. You need not be nervous or worried. I promise you, Lasam, no harm will flow from your words. Only understanding."

No harm to her would flow from his words. Depending on those words, Vakarian was another matter.

She swallowed, brows drawn from the sustaining venom-call in her voice, inclined to trust him to begin with, vulnerable and floating on those conditions "He's a bonded Turian. I'm an inexperienced human. I told him first…no kissing…and he agreed, until he convinced me to kiss him. I want to…he hasn't…he isn't taking. He isn't demanding. He's patient and…he's creative. It's my fault. I can't tell him no. I mean, I can, but I can't."

Thane was relieved. So desire on both sides and a Turian wishing to claim his mate fully, but held back by her small finger as Thane was. More kinship. "That's good, Lasam. If you need strength, you come to me for it. Why are you afraid to have sex?"

Her eyes closed, thinking, sorting through the thick venom as thoughts pressed up against her mind at his call "He wanted to give up the Councilorship. He wanted to come back on the Normandy. I love him, but I can't give him everything, not yet. I'd never be able to leave his side if I promised him everything. I know…he wants to keep me safe, and once I give him everything…I'll want that because he wants it. I want to love like my parents did. I do…love like my parents did. If he asks me the right question in Reverie…that leads to me telling him I love him, and that love's bigger than everything else. I don't care about the galaxy or the Council or Shepard…and that when he wants to protect me I want him to be able to protect me. I don't want to lie to him. I want to give him every truth. But I still have to be Shepard, I still have to hide Cara. Everyone else needs him as Councilor. I need him to get my job done…Shepard does…and Cara was not valuable enough to resurrect so she could run away and abandon the problems everyone faces."

"Cara is valuable enough, Lasam."

"That's sweet…I want to tell you how not true that is, but it's hard. It's not true, but you are kind. If Garrus is on the Normandy, if I have sex…so far I only kiss him and I have asked him to be quiet, to not talk when I'm under Reverie because…I'd give him anything he asked. He'd ask me to leave command, he'd ask me to follow him somewhere safe…and I'd have my heaven. He's my heaven and I want to go…"

Thane thought for a detached and spinning moment of giving her what she wanted…telling her to go…leave with your lover and don't look back…and if we all die, we deserve it.

If he could have a day, a week, a month…with Irikah…would anybody stop him from choosing her?

He could do it, right now, turn Cara's head to his, kiss her until tiremit bore the brand of command. Tell her that two people amid the trillions should not be held responsible for the outcome of a war that had been waged cycle after cycle. Take your happiness. Do not throw away your heaven. She would tell Vakarian, he would provide the impetus and method.

But he had to ask the more important question.

"What do you want, Lasam?"

Her voice was certain "I want to win. I want to defeat the Reapers. I want to…Thane, you talked about earning your eternity…I want to earn mine. I can be Shepard and I can win. Then I can let her go and be myself. I'll go with him anywhere, anything he wants. I'll be happy with him anywhere. It would be my heaven. I won't have a heaven if I know every day I've condemned…how many people…to hell because I didn't have faith, I couldn't wait, because I was afraid. We can both have what we want…I just can't let him protect me as much as he would, as he will, until I'm done. I believe I can do it. I have to try."

"Then you shall. And you fear he would overwhelm you? Take you beyond your will?"

"Yes."

"Then I promise you now, Lasam. If he were to do such a thing, I would find you. I would return you to yourself. You are not alone. I will be your will in this and in other things if you cannot. All you must do is tell me what it is you require, and it shall be done. Do not fear."

"That's a biiiig promise."

"It will stand for as long as I live. What is your opinion of Spectre Orbestan?"

"He doesn't like me. He's good. He's Garrus's friend, and he doesn't like me. I made his life difficult…our first time out."

So she had no idea of Orbestan's devotion to her bond mate. Orbestan was as much Garrus's friend as Thane was Cara's. They all needed new words.

"You speak to Councilor Vakarian each day. When will you speak to him today?"

"I'm on the Citadel. I'll see him on his hours off. I should…he should…what do we say to him?"

"Do you believe he will answer a request from me to speak to him?"

"Yes."

"Give me his contact. Allow me, Lasam. Rest."

She gave him Garrus's contact, closed her eyes at his suggestion. More stolen truths to determine Vakarian's fate, now sealed. Now Thane knew what he needed to know and beyond that would act in her best interest, whether or not it set him against Vakarian. He could not fault the man for wanting to take her away, but he honored Cara's truth and not Vakarian's.

He carried her upstairs to the room intended to be hers, laid her on the counterpane and draped a blanket over her, taking a moment to tuck it in around her.

He went back downstairs, took a breath and requested a link, coded as private. Garrus Vakarian answered "Yes?"

"Councilor Vakarian, this is Thane Krios. There are some things I would like to discuss with you. At your convenience, but if at all possible, if you could meet at my location using these instructions. Commander Shepard is with me. There is no danger, but I would like to speak to you before the situation escalates in any way. The method of transport provided should ensure privacy."

Vakarian's voice was decisive "I'll be right there."

He was true to his word, Thane spending the time considering his approach. There was more need for utility than stealth. Wherever possible he would opt for truth. Shortly after Thane opened the back entrance. Vakarian entered, nodding a perfunctory greeting and looking for Cara.

Thane informed him "Thank you for your attention to this matter. Commander Shepard is upstairs sleeping."

"Is she all right?"

"Yes. I told her I wished to speak to you, she is resting. There is no danger. There are decisions that require your consent, I wished to arrange them."

"What decisions?"

"Please, this way. Would you care for something to drink?"

"No thank you."

"As you wish. A seat." Garrus chose one in the living room, Thane sat as far from him as possible. "I owe you a great debt, that of the life of my son and whatever time I am able to spend with him. I owe Commander Shepard a great debt, that of my continued life and the opportunity to do something meaningful with it. It came to my attention that the rumor of you being bonded to Commander Shepard is true. I wish to shield you both from whatever negative political consequences that may bring. I have obtained this apartment in hopes that she would find it comfortable and a refuge while on the Citadel. The entrance you used to arrive should provide you with discretion. It would be my intent that you both be able to spend time together here without interruption."

Garrus stared and asked quietly "How…did this come to your attention?"

"Information is my business. I became interested in Commander Shepard, intrigued. I sought to convince her to become involved with me. When she was unavailable I wished to know why. I found out everything about her that I could and my methods were intrusive. This is in part my apology to her for violating her privacy."

"Intrusive…how…?"

"I used illegal means to gather information about her past and illegal means to invade her quarters."

Garrus smiled and leaned slightly forward "And I should not kill you right now because?"

"You have that right. She has that right. If you choose to do so, I would not defend myself. I wished to speak to you directly and not ask her to explain on my behalf."

"And she's upstairs, not tied up or hostage?"

"She is upstairs sleeping. If you wish to assure yourself of that, please do so."

Garrus seemed to be unable to resist doing it, losing interest in Thane entirely, moving up the stairs at a two-at-a-time pace. He found her, leaned down and ruffled her hair. "Limayeth. Everything's okay? Thane Krios is making his introductions and I'm deciding whether or not to kill him. What do you think?"

"Don't kill him."

"You sure? He said he wouldn't fight back, it would be easy."

"No, definitely don't kill him. I'm going with you."

Garrus picked her up and carried her back down "You always make things complicated."

"I told you someone would find out."

"Mmmm…"

"Yeah, look who's guilty now."

"Stop being reasonable."

"None of this is reasonable."

"I believe you."

Garrus sat back down in the same location, Cara held in his lap, Vakarian's hands rearranging the blanket around her, to Thane's eyes gentle, betraying no anger at her. Garrus crossed his forearms around her and said "She told me I can't kill you. So continue."

Thane inclined his head "As I owe you both a debt I cannot repay, I offer this apartment and a plausible social shield. If Commander Shepard appears in public with me as her escort, we could distract attention from your relationship. She and I could travel to and from this apartment, and I could protect her from press or other attempted suitors. Councilor Vakarian, you could use the concealed entrance. I also extend to you my willingness to deal with any attempts at blackmail that reach your office. Simply tell me which threats are made and by whom and they will cease to be made."

Garrus said quietly "That's very generous and I'm going on record as saying I hate this idea."

Cara said just as quietly "But you don't have a better one. It solves problems."

"It creates more of them."

"No, it doesn't."

"You want me to watch the news as camera crews follow you around, as you go dancing or out to dinner, and I'm not supposed to murder someone? The someone sitting right there? No personal offense, Krios, but if you touch my bond mate I will want to kill you. I want to kill you now."

Cara repeated "I told you that you couldn't."

Thane interjected "Councilor Vakarian. Commander Shepard is a woman of absolutes. She is in love with you. I am through my actions and choices unsuited to, in fact disqualified as someone she would consider as a potential lover. I wish to guard her in battle and protect her from intrusion into her private life. She has inspired me to wish to protect her. Your circumstances can change, some day you can be together, if the political landscape changes or if the war is won and you wish to retire from public life. My circumstances, my past, my persona, will not change. Regardless of whether or not you existed, she would not allow herself to be involved with me. You can reject my offer, can in fact kill me…"

Cara said as a correction again just to make it clear "No rejecting. No killing."

Thane continued "The required element is trust. I am aware that I do not deserve trust and it would be difficult to give. I have vowed my arm, I have granted my Spirit. She believes it would ease her life, give her more time with you, lessen her concerns and yours so you could have more time together. I am a distraction, nothing more."

Cara said "You're a friend."

Garrus said as though they hadn't heard him "I really, really don't like this."

Cara said primly "But you don't have a better solution."

Garrus sighed "How about he doesn't touch you?"

Thane said "I have a further concern. I am assuming that Spectre Orbestan is aware that you are bonded."

Garrus said reluctantly "Yes."

Thane replied "His loyalty to you, Councilor Vakarian, would be problematic if he believes that Commander Shepard has betrayed your bond. I would suggest informing him of the deception. It would be best if it came from you, he is suspicious of us both. I have asked him in strong terms to exhibit more respect toward Commander Shepard, but it would be best if you gained his understanding."

Garrus said with his eyes narrowing "He hasn't been respectful?"

Cara said "He's a Spectre, Garrus…he doesn't want to take orders from me."

Thane said emphatically "He has not been respectful."

Now Garrus turned to Cara "And you didn't tell me?"

She tilted her head back and sighed "Because it's not required that he be my best friend. He's your best friend. He can speak to you freely. He's your independent eyes and ears on the ship. You needed and still need him as an external viewpoint. I wasn't going to take that from you. When we didn't speak, I was certain you were checking in with him to get updates, weren't you?"

Garrus sighed and breathed out hard through his nose "Yes."

Thane said "I do not wish to strain loyalties. I would prefer that we all worked together, but you wanting to kill me in essence will translate to Spectre Orbestan wanting to kill both Commander Shepard and myself, out of loyalty to you."

Garrus saw Thane's emphatic stare, the slight emphasis on the word 'loyalty,' the implied knowledge that Thane knew Russ was in love with Garrus. Ah, fuck. That's what was going on. Garrus said quietly "I'll take care of it."

Thane inclined his head "As you wish. Questions of command staffing are not within my power to determine, I do not wish to antagonize him further."

Garrus asked carefully "How much have you antagonized him?"

Thane responded "He considers me a mercenary building up to cutting her throat. I made a personal threat that is effective to control his behavior, but is reprehensible in nature. I would never have executed the threat, but I felt I would do him harm if he expressed further disrespect in my presence."

Garrus tilted his head back "I like this even less. While we're being honest…what was it?"

Thane said "I could not understand why Spectre Orbestan was disapproving of Commander Shepard. Not enough to explain his disagreement …" He looked at Cara. Garrus looked at Cara.

Cara said "He disagreed often."

Garrus said "He WHAT? Disagreed how?"

Cara said "Garrus, I told you I gave him a bad day. He didn't follow the 'listen the first time' directive, believes me to be reckless and argued with me on our first mission, wanted to evacuate Omega, and I pushed forward. I thought he was going to kill me. He's excellent at his job, he just…snorts and rolls his eyes a lot and as long as he takes down his target, I don't find his level of disrespect to be enough to remove him from service. He's like Wrex."

Garrus said angrily "And you didn't tell me."

Cara said reasonably "No, I didn't tell you…what were you going to do, ask a Spectre in his own right to be nice to me?"

Garrus answered "Yes, of course I would. I would have at least asked why."

Thane would prefer to not lay the matter bare, but it was necessary. Vakarian had included Cara in this conversation. Thane had hoped to handle this privately but could not risk sending Vakarian in unprepared about the virulence of the threat. "That is in essence what I asked of him, but as I had no leverage personally, I am afraid I threatened you, Councilor Vakarian. I promised him that if he did not stop expressing his obvious disgust at Commander Shepard's authority, I would make certain that you experienced political difficulty. Specific political difficulty."

Garrus tilted his head back "Oh, fuck. No. NO."

Cara asked "What?"

Thane addressed Cara "Spectre Orbestan is in love with Councilor Vakarian and has been since Councilor Vakarian rescued him at a young age from torture and abuse. I told Spectre Orbestan that if he did not show respect to you, as you deserved, I would begin a campaign of rumors that Spectre Orbestan was the man to whom Councilor Vakarian bonded. I implied that any damage he intended to cause to you or to me, I would ensure that Councilor Vakarian experienced excessive damage as a result. It was effective. He is an excellent squad mate. He stays just on the far side of insubordination and it could be explained as dislike or disagreement, but it goes deeper than that. I believe had I not been there at the Collector ship, he might have done you harm, at the least questioned and delayed your order to have his ship turned over to EDI, leaving her helpless."

Cara stared white lipped "You…both of you, how could you do that to him?"

Thane said quietly "I apologize. I sought to understand his motivations and I believe I do. I was concerned that I would be forced to do him harm. I believe that no matter how brilliant you were, he would remain suspicious for personal reasons, particularly if you appeared to be influenced by me."

Garrus's head tilted back "How could I…? Because I couldn't go with you! He has other accomplishments beyond being attracted to me."

She closed her eyes "I'm so sorry. I didn't know. And he's jealous and angry at me…I can see exactly why. He thinks I'm using you. Oh no. Oh, I'm so sorry."

Thane said quietly "It is not your fault."

Garrus reassured her "No, it isn't, it's mine. I'm sorry. I'll talk to him."

Cara said stoutly "If he wants to leave, I completely understand."

Thane told her "I suggested that he leave. He did not wish to go."

Garrus held up a hand "I'll talk to him."

Cara said softly "Please talk to him now."

Garrus stood up, lifted her with him and said "I will. I'm sorry for the misunderstanding and difficulty. It is my fault and not his. I miscalculated."

Cara said gently "It will be okay, he is a good man."

Thane inclined his head "Please relay my apologies."

Garrus growled in frustration and took her back upstairs, put her back on the bed where he'd gotten her and tucked her back in. He straddled her, looking down at her from a height, shook his head and said "I'm sorry, Limayeth."

She stroked his mandible and said "It's all right, I'm a big girl."

He smiled "That is untrue. That I can't protect you is killing me."

Her head tilted and she said "You are protecting me, every day. I promise you, I love you. We'll figure it out."

He lowered his body to hers, lowered his mouth and kissed her, both hungry, desperate for reassurance, for hope, for each other. He stayed longer than he intended, but tore himself away. "I'll fix it. I'll be back. Stay here."

She smiled, curled to her side in Reverie bliss and nodded "Promise."

He walked back downstairs, Thane having not moved, his face unreadable. Garrus said "Perhaps someday I will be able to thank you properly. Right now I'm still at the death threats stage."

"As am I, Councilor Vakarian. I had hoped to conduct that conversation in private. There are further things I wish to discuss with you privately, when it is possible."

Garrus rubbed his eyes and said "Yeah. All right, I can see the need for it. Right now I have to go do something excruciating."

"Do you require assistance?"

"She told me I couldn't kill you, that includes not letting Russ do it either. No."

"As you wish."


	23. Chapter 23

Garrus made it circuitously back to the tower, reality just having shifted to where he felt he was walking on the ceiling.

Russ.

Oh, Spirits, Russ.

What had Garrus known? That Russ never mentioned it, but other people did. That rumors were something people could not help repeating. That if Russ was not going to discuss it, neither was Garrus. That Russ had only ever offered friendship, so that's all Garrus was entitled to have. That Russ had not made a pass at him overtly or hinted. That Russ had listened to Garrus tell Shepard stories for hours and hours…and never suggested he move on or find someone else. He certainly never suggested himself as a solution to Garrus's heartbreak. That Russ was excellent at his job, had been irreplaceable in the biotic revamp of C-Sec, had been someone Garrus could trust. That Russ was the damned best friend he'd ever had.

That Cara had felt the need to tolerate disrespect because…

"He's like Wrex" covers a lot of disrespect…

Fuck.

He asked Russ to meet him at his apartment and Russ promised that he'd be there in a few minutes.

Fuck.

He had no idea what to say, both Cara and Krios unwilling to call him Russ at all, just Orbestan or Spectre Orbestan. He got a few bottles of ale and set them out, ones he stocked that were Russ's favorites. Well, Garrus hadn't corrected Thane every time he called him Councilor Vakarian and asked him to call him Garrus, either.

Fuck.

Russ was the only person who held real estate in his refrigerator, had been to his apartment more than anybody else. The ceremonial apple juice was in his office.

When Russ arrived, Garrus still had no idea what to say. Russ was smiling, greeted with forearms pressed together parallel.

Garrus indicated the ale and they sat down at the table saying "Sorry for the last minute invitation. This isn't exactly business or personal. I'll give you more notice on another day, it won't be rushed."

"It's not an inconvenience to see you. Happy to do it. Not much chance lately."

"Yeah. I have some questions, they're intrusive and personal and you might consider a pre-emptive walk out the door or hitting me for asking. I also have some things to say that are intrusive and personal and I apologize in advance. I owe you an apology. I just have to explain for what."

"Okay." Russ had lots of recent practice at keeping his relative cool. He wasn't sure he could keep his relevant cool. This was a lot of what the fuck up front. Russ busied himself with the ale to avoid sitting and staring.

"Well, let me get it out. I just talked to Shepard and Krios. I got the impression you hadn't approved of the way she's been conducting missions. Krios informed me of a vile threat he'd made…a threat he had no intention of carrying out…or so he says…to keep you in line. Shepard did not know, but Krios and I did…that you…" Be honest, don't downplay it, don't make it sound less than it is to make him clarify "are in love with me. Krios wanted to extend his apologies, so do I, so does Shepard. She insisted. So I want to know, where's your line and why can't you keep it?"

Russ put down his ale before it exploded in his hand "Well, you can't blame me for the love part. The rest, sure. Just not that."

"No. I don't…haven't blamed you. You've been everyone I've needed, Russ. If things were different, you should know I'd consider myself honored and lucky."

Russ closed his eyes and tilted his head back, subharmonics expressed in a long anguished keen. He really didn't care about Shepard or Krios or the Normandy or anything else right now. He could only think about what Garrus had just said. He needed a few minutes. Garrus gave them to him. Russ felt his world disintegrate, the only things solid right now the table and the chair and the man who would have felt honored and lucky to call him Ahr. When he could speak he said hoarsely "You saved my life once. Do I need to change my name and transfer? Or are you asking me what I want again?"

"I'm asking you what you want."

Russ nodded and still couldn't look at Garrus, tongue running over his teeth "Okay, so the love part doesn't require any explanation. As for the line…she's your bond mate. Why…aren't you having sex? Of all the strange things…this is the one that I cannot figure out. Keep your relationship quiet, sure. Not have one? Why? She's back from the dead and you're bonded…and I can't figure out if she manipulated you into it so she could tell you what to do while you get…nothing. Yeah, part of that's jealousy. I can't imagine a circumstance where you would not be wanted in an ideal world. I know you are spending time with her, and you were together on Illium. You were together after the Collector ship. If she's ideal…then why doesn't she ever smell like you?"

"I bonded to her without asking. Without even having a prior relationship other than attempting to have dinner with her. I think…she wanted to but did not want to make me risk being barefaced and losing my ambitions or lose my family. My mother was sick, she must have known. She knew…everything. She just didn't say so. I had only been thinking about planning maybe something else…figure it all out and make it work…when she died. When she was back…all I knew was that she was really there…and I wasn't thinking so much as feeling. Hell, Russ, that makes me deviant two ways, no consent and wrong species. She didn't get angry, didn't blame me, said she loved me, that she was mine…in theory…but tried fend me off for the same reasons, only more important now. Same risks, only now risking the Councilorship, risking the control I'd have over the fight from that position. She tried to get me to think. Obviously it didn't work so well."

"That bullshit is true? I thought you were just covering for her…lack of enthusiasm. She…apologized…for being bonded."

"No, that was not lack of enthusiasm, that was first-kiss Reverie shock. And it was an apology for putting you in the position of having to keep a secret. She's…formal…and…polite. I'm not sure I can explain it so you believe me. She grew up on Mindoir, it was apparently a religious place, lots of idealistic viewpoints. She doesn't eat meat. She doesn't drink alcohol. Privately, she doesn't even swear. No prior relationship, no sex. She doesn't talk about it, but there is a huge difference between Shepard…and Lal." He thought 'And then even more of a difference between Lal and Cara…' and continued "I just was told some truths or lies by Krios that all look like something else, but he knew I would ask you. I don't doubt Lal is telling the truth. I KNOW…she isn't working with Cerberus or looking to sell us out. When I say first kiss I don't mean first kiss with a Turian, or first kiss with me. I mean first kiss ever. She wasn't using me. She knew how I felt, she even felt the same way but knew she'd put my Councilorship in danger. She could predict what you knew, what Liara knew…that I'd walk right out that door and follow her anywhere. She was trying to protect me from the shock and…I just didn't manage to control myself. She tried to keep her head down and do her job without distraction, and I made that impossible."

"You're not a distraction, Garrus. You're a privilege."

"Yeah…thanks for that. In an ideal world, sure. In THIS world I'm the person that pinned her to a door and bonded to her without a word or consent. I did not ask her what she wanted, and when she told me, I didn't respect it. Krios explained his threat to you, wanted to speak privately with me but I insisted she be there, so now Shepard knows how you feel and what Krios did about it. She wanted to apologize for you being put in that position. She didn't ask you to leave because she wanted you to be able to reassure me if she couldn't. I don't know, maybe not reassure me…maybe she thought you'd be complaining. But she wanted me to have someone I trusted there. She did not want to force a confrontation. She wasn't going to disrupt your career because you weren't nice to her. She wasn't going to ask you to leave and make me more…crazed. She was unaware of the strain in loyalty and emotional cost it placed on you. She did not know about Krios's threat. He did that on his own. He says…he's been trying to protect her, has proposed having a fake relationship to keep the media off us. I…hate it…but it's a good idea, and I'm really, really sick of good ideas."

"You and me both. At least I know she also isn't having sex with him, or yeah, I probably would have killed him myself…and maybe her. This has made me stupid and crazy. I am sane enough to know I was biased. I didn't tell you because…I was trying to keep it together. All I had was the fact that her ideas were insane, which you knew going in and you tried to tell me but it seems different when you're on the ground and not drinking over a story laughing about it. I saw them getting closer, I saw her not claiming you…but I couldn't be the guy to tell you that. I figured…she had you both tied up in knots you couldn't untie. I wasn't wrong, was I? All he asked me to do was to obey her orders and not be a jackass in front of witnesses. He asked me to do my job. I saw it as just the first step toward controlling my behavior…but he was, as you said, trying to get me to find the line? So that isolationist bullshit is her…being what?"

"Herself. She prefers studying to people. She's concerned people won't follow her if she isn't a typical badass and unfortunately we just proved her right. She didn't say a word to me about you being out of line. I always brought you up and she always said you were extraordinary. She said she gave you a bad day. She defended your reaction and told me you were an incredible asset. I only began to suspect you weren't getting along that well when she had nothing else to say, and when Krios seemed to be closer to her than you were."

"Ah…fuck. I knew there was something off about her, I knew she was lying…I just…didn't know about what."

"Bad days are bad."

"No fucking kidding."

"So I'm asking…and I will remain always wanting you to be my closest friend, knowing it would have been an honor if had gone another way. Do you want to get off the Normandy? She will understand that you can't follow her if you decide. If you've had a tough time so far, knowing this will only make it harder. She won't explain. She'll do insane things that look like obvious failure. She needs absolute obedience, and we all understand if you can't give it. You've been stuck there because I asked you, and that is why I owe you an apology. I asked you for something personally and it cost you. I asked you to do something I needed without considering all the angles. This is why I can't demand absolute obedience, it turns out I'm an idiot. I had one hour to make the decisions to determine my life with her and the war, and I fucked them up, which created this situation. If you just can't get along with Shepard, you could be free with her highest recommendation, back to your personal Spectre authority."

"Krios told me I didn't understand my circumstances and I'd be ashamed of myself if I did know. That won't fucking haunt me every day. Look…are you absolutely Spirit-stapled sure…that they aren't both playing you?"

"Well, the answer is…yeah, they're both playing me. They're both obviously out of my league as far as intelligence goes. They seem a lot alike, after talking to him I can see that. Look, she's shy, but she's the smartest person I've ever met and she spends all of her time preparing for her next challenge. All that time spent alone, she is studying and thinking, and it looks like Krios was doing the exactly the same thing for a few months. So when she gets to a choice it is lightning fast. Maybe he's not as fast, but he makes up for it with patience and prep. She told me…he was the most likely person to figure it out, that he was smart and observant and frightening as a person…but not petty. I believe her about that. When I'm being a jackass I don't think she has a choice but to play me. She told me what to do and I didn't listen the first time. I don't know why I thought a relationship was going to be different from command…now comes my bad day."

"So if she knows everything, why doesn't she know about me?"

"I can't tell you for sure, but I'll tell you why she might not know everything. For the same reason that she didn't talk to you and didn't interfere or force you to act a certain way. As long as you followed her orders, which she said you did, that was all she needed. Krios stated in more distinct terms that you had been disrespectful. She said she thought you were going to kill her. Did you want to?"

"Hell yes. More than once. Krios stopped me on the Collector ship from tearing her apart when she was about to hand over my Ferox to an unshackled AI."

"But you did it."

"Yeah, she was turned away, at the console, she didn't see. Krios did. He didn't threaten me in front of the squad, just…reminded me of what it was I should do, quietly. Only I knew he'd kill me if I took another step and didn't follow orders immediately."

"Okay…so now Krios is even more certain that he's done the right thing and I can confirm he's trying to protect her, protect the mission. He's on point with that. I haven't been. You haven't been. All right, so knowing that you were inclined to kill her, she wasn't going to try to be your friend. You stated a preference, she respected it. She left you to me and isn't like Krios, isn't interested in controlling your behavior beyond following orders. You're gonna hate this, but I believe she left you alone and didn't research you out of respect for you and for me, knowing she wouldn't do a damned thing to influence you even if she could. First she assumed you'd tell me immediately, that's what she thought you were already doing. I think she treated you like you were my confidential informant. She left you in place and allowed you to report. She had planned to NOT communicate with me, and if she left you there like that, you could have at least relayed that she was well and you were all alive. When I insisted on communicating…I think she knew we were going to get caught and it was not if but when. She still wanted to let you report on her to me."

"I feel like shit, but I feel slightly better that we're going to win this thing. I begin to feel sorry for Reapers."

"Yeah. Okay, so they're both playing us. Hell, maybe they're playing each other. But they're also…getting the job done. And maybe they're not playing us and he's got enough reason to want to protect her. This being my bad day, I'm in an awful position to insist on anything, and she has informed me I can't reject his offer and I can't kill him. I hate to think of what would happen and my worse day if I don't go along with that. This might let us have a relationship and this might let off some pressure, much as I hate to admit it. It's my fault she was exposed in the first place. This is them trying to fix what I screwed up. Krios wouldn't have been able to get anything on us at all if I hadn't insisted that we meet and communicate. That whole first run when you were out, she never spoke to me, but I sent her comm every day, demanding that she answer. She was right, and I did check in with you every day, at least I knew she was alive and she knew…I'd find that out and she didn't have to tell me. Krios risked his life threatening you for her. I risked about nothing to save his son, but he owes me, he owes Shepard. He's got Kepral's. He is not going to live for long. He's not even being paid."

"Kepral's? How long to live? What the fuck?"

"I don't know. A few months, a year? Shit, Russ, if he's already saved her from you tearing her apart and failing a few missions because her choices get more and more insane…don't I owe him something myself? At least not killing him for presenting me with a solution to a problem I created? So he steals my bond mate from me for how long? Spirits, do I owe him that? I fucked up and I need to pay. But I will tell you…I don't think that's what is happening or what can happen. He said that he was disqualified by his nature from HER considering having a relationship with him. He said she was a woman of absolutes. She is. I don't really think she's going to have sex with him. But just…the close relationship they already have…I fucking hate that in its own right, that he's in her head, understands what she wants and needs and gets it for her. That's what this comes down to. He's forcing us…to do what she wants or get out. Things we should have done anyway. Find that line."

"But then he made us do it so he gets all the credit."

"Yes. But he also could have insisted that I not have any relationship with her…to repair damage…and just gone and had a 'fake' relationship with her, provoked me into further insanity. Instead he gives me a secret entrance."

"Well, he just made you look like a fucking idiot…no offense…maybe he just keeps on doing that. Problem solved."

"As one fucking idiot to another, you're not helping."

"Sure I am."

"I can't really argue with the fact that he knows what the hell is going on and that someone should do something about it. He could have lied to me about you, and he's risked his life a few times today by confessing to shit you never would have told me. He's offered to handle blackmailers…and I don't even know WHAT that means. Kill their children? I see how he uses the leverage he has. He could have destroyed team morale instead of trying to fix it. With what he has on her, on you, on me, he could have encouraged you to kill her. He sat and calmly proposed touching my bond mate in front of cameras for my own good and said I had the right to kill him, that he wouldn't defend himself for violating her privacy. So we're sort of even on the deviant scale and I don't like knowing it. Sure, he wants to sleep with her, same way you might want to sleep with me, with about the same odds of success. She's not that damned easy to sleep with, believe me. He could have sold this information, killed you both…hell, killed us all. What he's proposing makes sense in the same way Shepard's ideas make sense. They're crazy and they might work and they're the only things that would work to reach a certain goal. She said once that he was the most likely to keep her alive, is that true?"

Russ's jaw moved and then he said "Yes. I've been kind of busy seething, but he always has her back. So you're telling me this powerhouse hard ass cold bitch…"

"Yeah. It's an act. Look, I thought you'd see what I saw in her. I thought you'd feel at least partly the same way I did, that she deserves protection. I can understand that the way things turned out rubbed you raw and you wanted to protect me. I appreciate it. She appreciates it, she feels awful. She knows you don't like her. She also knows you don't know her and doesn't take it personally. She blamed it on her command style. Even with the truth she won't hold it against you. She's not like that at all. She insisted I talk to you as soon as she found out. But she can't…change her command style, it's who she is. She can…feel awful about it when she's not commanding. She can feel…awful about delaying bond. I take full responsibility for every fucked up step."

"Except that I've added my particular blend of fucked up."

"Yeah, and Krios bugged her quarters."

"I have a tough time liking that guy."

"Yeah. I don't think he gives a damn if we like him. I think he gives a damn if she can do her job without crying herself to sleep."

Russ's head tilted back "Oh fuck. I'd say I feel small, but that's insulting her again."

"I'm telling you this because I threw you in the middle of it, you deserve to know. She is an intensely private and idealistic person, and to get people to follow her, she needs to be someone else. I fell in love with her before she died, I knew she was shy. She trusted me, she opened up to me...at least some. More than to anybody else. I at least have that. She's given herself to me…even with my bullying…my letter of the law if not Spirit of her law. Krios had to steal it and I think that's part of why he knows he's disqualified. But he knows shit she's not telling me, won't tell me, and that makes me crazy too. She left me…everything in her will. And a message. And I knew…she loved me. I knew it, it was something she hadn't intended to be seen until after she died, but…I knew it then. Liara…Liara linked with her. If you don't believe me, believe Liara. She's the same…and she is in love with me, and was before. She didn't come back wrong. Liara told me that some of her first thoughts were about how to protect me. That's what she does. She won't let me protect her, that's what this is about. She asked Liara if there were any high-ranking Turian-human couples in the Hierarchy when Liara suggested I'd be…happy to see her."

"You know, while we're on the subject of shit that makes our lives unnecessarily difficult, fuck the Hierarchy."

"I'd go barefaced and jobless just to be able to be on her 6 again. Or just…hell, just run away somewhere. I'm not all that sane. I can't stand that she's out there and I can't do anything about it. I can't stand that I put you in the position where the two of you couldn't work together. I…hell, I tracked her down on Illium and she didn't even know I was coming. Bullied her and…fuck."

"Yeah, well, you're still alive. I'm assuming she held her own."

"Yeah, I'm fucked up and she loves me…and I don't deserve it. But I'll be damned if I won't fight for it. Stupid and crazy sums that up. I'm sorry…and I can't stop. But listen…she loves me. That was true before she died, it was true when I bonded, it's true now, and she will claim me when we all…fix this thing. Win the war."

"No pressure."

"I fucked up and…I'm not sorry. Not for bond. Never. She's mine. Just not…right now. However I fucked up by driving her to distraction, making you doubt her motives and creating the conditions that allowed Krios to step in…I'm sorry about that, and it all comes from the bond, but…I can't take it back, I can't give her up. She won't ask me to do that. Without her Omega would have dispersed a plague and war and we'd be short half a million Turians and Trireme. Without her I'd just be a disgraced ex-C-Sec agent. She's the one that made sure I could make it to Executor and then Councilor in the first place because I said I wanted the job…she wanted to protect that, protect what I've done. What we've done. Right now she's focused on what's best for everyone, and I've been focused on what's best for me. I need to make it about everyone too. So can you do that job with her, or do you want again to do something else? Krios will work with you as long as you don't undermine her, as long as you support her, but even without how you feel…can you back her up? If you can't, I'll get you whatever assignment you need or want. Right now you can start your own missions, task force for the takedown of Collector ships maybe. I will always, always support your choices as much as I can. Whatever you need. I'm telling you that I won't pressure you to stay, and that our relationship doesn't change, you are my friend no matter what. She will not take you from me. That isn't like her at all. She's saying you have a position if you want it or a glowing recommendation if you don't. Krios…well…fuck Krios, he's saying he won't kill you as long as you find the line."

"Krios accused me of being a good and reasonable man. So he was wrong there."

"No, you needed facts to reason with. There was no way you were getting them from her. She doesn't explain. I should have remembered nobody else got to see her the way I did on the Normandy, and Liara knows her because of a mind link, not voluntary confidences. When you met her she was nervous and had a mark on her throat, I thought you'd seen enough."

"Fuck no. I decided she was playing you so that she'd have control of you."

"Yeah, she figured that you'd feel that way, we were in the middle of me wanting to kill Krios and working that out and she told me to talk to you. Now. I'm sorry for the mess."

"I think it would have been easier to stay angry all the time, now I'm guilty and scared and I have to consider doing the same job?"

"Yeah, I think you just described Shepard."

"Fuuuuck. So if they both sell us to the Reapers I get to say I'm right, right?"

"Sounds kinda relaxing at this point. I can't tell you how much I miss being able to shoot at my problems."

Russ laughed, took a sip of ale and said "I want to stay. She's still crazy, right? I get to keep that impression?"

"Oh yeah. What was your bad day like?"

"I really don't want to talk about it."

Garrus laughed "Yeah, you're not hearing about mine either."

Russ considered "So Shepard gets to shoot stuff but she doesn't want to, wants to have sex but can't. Krios can't sleep with her and now has to risk you wanting to kill him for touching your bond mate, and me wanting to kill him for making a bad situation worse. You can't shoot anything or sleep with your bond mate. So I'm the only one with the option of still having sex, not with the guy I want, of course, but I can have it, and I still get to shoot stuff? Turns out this isn't so bad in comparison."

"Shut up, Yiansoc."

They both laughed until Russ wound down and said again "Fuck."

"Yeah."

"How do I apologize for an error of this magnitude?"

"I can relay it if you want me to. She will not hold it against you, neither will Krios. Clean slate, start over, if you feel you can work together. Don't be surprised if she never mentions it. She wouldn't. It took me…hell, I didn't knock on her cabin door until the last day of our mission. Seemed like an impossible invasion."

"I never considered going to talk to her, she didn't come to me unless it was business. Tell her, tell him, I'm sorry. I'll figure out what to say when I see them next, or maybe I won't say anything if they don't want to mention it. Give me shore leave to think. I feel better. All it took was my pride and my dignity. It's better that I'm the asshole than that they're about to hand the Normandy over to the bad guys."

"That wouldn't have happened."

"No. I was watching though. I couldn't get anything solid on them, they're both…really good."

"Go have sex with someone that looks like me. You'll feel better."

"Shut up, Vakarian."

"I'm sorry I didn't ask you about how you felt. Ever. I thought you wanted to keep it private. I was flattered, honored, and hopeful that you'd find someone new. Do you want to talk about it?"

Russ tilted his head and looked Garrus in the eye and said steadily "I did want to keep it private. I knew I had no chance against Shepard's memory. Do I want to talk about the fact that you're my ideal man? The man who saved my life and gave me my future? The man whose image inspired me to be like him as much as I could manage? Which granted, isn't a lot, I'm an asshole, clearly, but I tried. Do I want to talk about the fact that if I did find someone new, what chance would they have against that? I've met lots and lots of new people. You want me to find someone better? Someone better than saving my life, saving the Citadel, giving biotics and the barefaced a place on the Citadel, in the Spectres? A man who is saving the Turian people? A man whose dedication to someone he loved didn't slow down or stop when she was dead? And now I'm your friend. You want me to talk about giving that up, ever? You want me to risk bonding to someone when I'm still in love with you? Promise what I know I can't give and then have that person pay the price for my mistake, hoping bonding chemistry could change my mind when nothing else did? You want to talk about the fact that maybe you could have met someone new that made you forget Shepard?"

Garrus took a slow drink of his ale and then said "Spirits, if I were that good, you'd think I'd be able to think of something to say to that."

"Don't worry, I'll make up something cool, we can both pretend you said it."

"I kinda wish Krios had killed me."

"I kinda wish Shepard had shot me and left me for dead on Omega."

"She would have."

"Think she could?" 

"If you didn't see it coming, which she would make sure you didn't? Oh yeah. You didn't see Wrex's bad day." Garrus pondered for a moment and then said helplessly "She's my Avah. She has been…for years."

"Yeah, well, I know what that's like. You're my Avah. Like it or not."

"No pressure."

"I'm going to stick to shooting things, try to think less. Seems I'm not that good at it. I'll follow her orders. Krios was not wrong. Anything for you, Garrus. He will no longer be the one most likely to keep her alive, I promise."

"Thank you. He said he had more to say to me privately."

"Fuuuuuck."


	24. Chapter 24

Thane sat in the same position he'd been in after Vakarian left, Cara upstairs resting. He intended to give them both privacy and likely would not have many opportunities to speak to Vakarian again in person if events proceeded as he envisioned. It would be best to not exacerbate the insult that he spent time with Cara in Vakarian's absence. He would not force Vakarian to social nicety. Thane could use the front or rear exit and be absent for all of the time Vakarian would be able to see her.

His main remaining concern was Cara's reticence regarding consummation of bond and what damage it would do to them both, or what benefit it was to her in autonomy and to Vakarian in ignorance. Thane favored Vakarian, for whom her pure autonomy would be painful and unnecessary if he could be brought to understand Cara's concerns without taking critical advantage of her. Without Thane's intervention it was possible that Cara would insist upon remaining separate until one or both of them died, without consummation. A potentially impossible and unnecessary sacrifice.

She spoke as though she were two separate entities, but she was Shepard as truly as she was Cara. She wanted what Shepard wanted. That was something only he was in the unique position to address. If she were able to integrate her idealism and ambitions, perhaps she would be better able to hold her position and still be a bond mate. Could he lessen an absolute in a woman known for them? More importantly should he, or would it destabilize her critically? With her force of will there was no question that she could defend the right to remain Shepard on her terms. That would be ideal as Thane was not likely to live long.

Perhaps she would choose being only Shepard, and that would be an incalculable loss, innocence being infinite in value. Thane did not believe he could bring that about, only that if that were the outcome, he would regret asking her to shift perspectives. From what he had seen of them, stolen and given moments, they did love each other. From what he had seen of Vakarian during her death, he had planned a life of devotion to her ideals.

He had promised her she would be safe from Vakarian attempting to remove her from command and he must find a way to do that. Thane staying alive for the rest of her life was not a viable plan. Ignoring the situation and allowing it to 'work out' would result in Vakarian in this moment respecting her out of momentary setback…but there would be relentless pursuit, it was unavoidable. Bond would demand it. He doubted Cara understood the power of that drive alone, much less her desire for that bond to take place.

Reverie over time would cause her inhibitions to fail, and her inhibitions themselves caused her distress. He needed to remember she had not had sex, knew of it intellectually, but that would not stand against a determined bond mate accustomed to finding solutions to problems. Thane could not allow her to be treated as an obstacle, could not allow her to experience herself as one.

The earlier conversation with Cara mentioning speaking to her parents, her wish for him to reconnect to Irikah brought Irikah's voice to him on the subject.

'Tasak, you would know about relentless pursuit.' Teasing, humor and love in her voice, making him close his eyes and breathe, recalling her scent and the way light loved her as he did, the smile on her face and easy grace of her body.

Tasak…a word he'd avoided, her name for him. The Tasak were clan trackers who found the lost in the desert, sought out water sources and food. She had always focused on tracking being of benefit to the group. She had attempted to bring him more into the clan image of tracker rather than hunter, and had failed, but the name remained.

He did know about relentless pursuit. 'Ree, would you have been best without me? Would she be best without him? I thought I knew. If I do not know the first, how am I to know the second?'

'Perhaps you had better ask whether or not the shore would be best without the tidal wave bearing down upon her. Circumstances as they are, there is nothing the shore can do but be rearranged, and there is no force beyond that of the Gods or Death to stop a Tasak from finding his intended quarry. Would he at any point turn the other way, back out to the sea that welcomes him and understands him?'

'For shame, Ree, women are not like the sand. Were I to say such…your wrath…' He smiled, memories of teasing, of her sharp mind and wit that was never brittle, but flexible and bright, always new as spring grass.

She knew him. 'My wrath. As though you would not know what to do with wrath. There are many places where I hold strength, but I would be a fool to invoke your temper. I am not a fool.'

'Perhaps not now, but were you once a fool? Scattered as the shore? A comparison I do not support but you prefer not arguing…' He also had preferred not arguing, silence his shield and his tendency to draw her mouth to his the most often proffered response.

'Listen and hear me well, Tasak. You gave me love, you gave me a son, you gave me years of beauty and joy…and silent argument. You were as you were and I was as I was and we were able to meet in shared places. I could not travel to the sea and you could not travel inland, but we could meet. Between us we held what made up all the worlds, land and sea. Without you I would have never been drawn out of myself. I cherish what you gave me. I could not have been loved so fiercely by another.'

His eyes stung and hearing her voice he was reminded of the question asked first upon hearing of the death of their beloved. 'Did they suffer?'

She had suffered. He had carried a picture of her broken body with him, and each time the grieving, raging Tasak found someone who had been in the room where she had died or a person involved in any step leading to someone being in that room with her, he showed them her picture and asked…who was it that put this mark upon her body? He asked them or told them what had been done to her moment by moment, until the stories blended into the horrific entirety of what happened to her, what happened to them. He knew that picture, each mark had a name, each name had a death, each death had marks of their own.

'I did listen. I did hear well.' He told her.

'You are not a god, Tasak, only death.'

'I am not a god, but death stalks them both. You and I had our years, I had my pursuit. His pursuit is over and she is sure but she still holds him at bay for potentially no reason if circumstances were to change. For both of them it has been years, for him longer, for her feared and fated. I imagine you and I separated for three of those years…what I would not hold in memory…what three years of my life with you means to me…and I wish for them to take what they can of each other and be blessed as I was.'

'We would not have had Kolyat without those years.'

'And the innocent are infinite in value.'

'They cannot have children.'

'But they can have each other.'

'And if she is right and he takes her away, you are dead and Kolyat is at risk?'

'Everyone's child is at risk. Ree, I cannot care for everyone. I care for you. I care for her. I care for Kolyat and his life, but it must be possible for her to have her hunt and her love.'

'Then there is your answer, my Tasak. You wish a thing, therefore a thing shall be. You wish for her happiness. You know it is not with you. You believe it could be with him. Yet you would kill him if he does not provide happiness in the depth and breadth you desire for her.'

'I was not good enough for you. He is not good enough for her.'

'Must desire be good?'

'I would not know.'

'And there you are a liar yet again.' Not angry. Irikah was never angry. She was wise, she was restrained, she was permissive and he rarely managed to speak with her for long without drawing her to him and bending her body to his as seemed his right and her joy.

'I know my desire for you is the greatest good I've known. I am not convinced it was good for you.'

'Was I somehow unconvincing, Tasak?'

She had never been unconvincing. Never that. He missed her beyond speech, as though the breath were pressed from his lungs and blood from his flesh and he was like the undead that rose up in starlight and stalked the desert for sustenance they would not find, to fall again to sand in the sunlight.

'You were born generous. It would be beyond my power to take that from you.'

'You grant all glory of creation to the Gods. You are devout and mistaken. Beyond Gods and duty, I needed you and loved you as you were, each day. You wonder if a woman can blend her duty and her love…how are you to help her if you cannot reconcile your grief and your love? How can you convince him to allow her to be as she is, do as she must do, be in danger and unguarded, if you cannot allow that I chose the same for myself?'

'You did not send me away. You did not keep me away. Perhaps it would simply be best if I had them both drugged and left on a moon with no transport or communication.'

She laughed and it was beautiful 'That would be easiest. You are not a man of easy.'

'And you have never been a woman of straight answers.'

'Liar. So many things to which I said yes.'

'Every day, Ree. Every day I miss you.'

'Remember, when you allow them to take me from you…you allow them to take you from me. What if I am not a voice in your head, what if the Gods, about whom you are so devout and mistaken…allow me to speak to you from the Shores? Every day I miss you, Tasak.'

'Irikah…'

'You have lived your grief. I have seen it. You need not speak it again. I am gone from the worlds but not from your heart, and they cannot take me from you if you do not let them. You sought to save everyone you saw who suffered…you never asked for help or aid, you took it all upon yourself. I was there, willing to help, willing to aid, wanting to. I am here now, and the same need is there. Listen to her. Listen to me. You know my voice, my thoughts, Tasak, as you knew my body. Save your wrath for those who deserve it, not for yourself. Save yourself. You suffer. I do not demand, require or ask for your suffering. I never did. It is you who requires that to be your greatest truth. My greatest truth is that I love you. I found love and spent each day embracing his gifts.'

'I listen. I hear. And if her story ends as yours did because I counseled him to grant her choices?'

'Perhaps in this case we are like the sand. Ubiquitous. You cannot gather us fully in your hands, and perhaps holding a handful makes you believe you understand the land from which it came. We are children of mountains and not so easily counted or contained. Our story does not end. I live in you. She would live in him. You live in those whose lives you have saved. So does and would she. He forged a future with that fire after she died. Whether or not desire must be good, in their case…it has been. I am now as I was in life, Tasak. I do not profess to know all the answers. She spoke of consent and you spoke of Spirit and here I speak of Will. You are forgiven and loved, yet you are ever driven toward further accomplishment. You will never earn rest until you are dead. You know that you will not choose to do nothing when you see something could be done. He is powerful and willful. He wishes to grant his authority to his Avah, yet she is human and not bound to Turian law. He himself is not bound. He creates law. With her he will create his own law. You have ignored consent and you will continue to do so. He will seek to wear down her consent. You with tiremit and he with Reverie will dissolve with the tide whatever castle she seeks to build of herself. Her consent is lost and is but a fiction. Know what she is capable of doing when she realizes she wasted time on castles in the sand, that she waited on the shore hoping to see you, to see him, when she could have been safe. Perhaps she will wish to return to the mountain, out of reach of the tide. You will both lose her, both be aware of selfish scheming that will deny you the right to her memory.'

'She loves him, she would forgive him.' He did not extend that same right to himself.

'As I forgive you. As I love you. That does not mean she deserves to be placed in the position of having to forgive. Just as you should not be placed in a position where you must kill. Just as he should not be placed in a position where he must overcome an obstacle. It is what you do. As you have observed, none of you will see a choice when you are asked to do for seemingly good reason…what you are best at doing.'

'So I must change one variable and hope all other variables do not fall. Control that she chooses to consummate bond, by her own Will, Spirit and Consent. Be a Whole person. Bid his tidal wave to stand unmoving until she reaches out her hand in welcome.'

'As ever you do not ask why but how.'

'Tell me you love me, Ree.'

'I love you, Tasak. Always. Remember that sand is also at the bottom of the deepest sea. You are not as mysterious as you presume to be. Not to me.'

'Is there ever a possibility that I could be forgiven?'

'By me, that is already done. By the Gods I cannot say but I would stand by your side and beg them to forgive you.'

'By Kolyat?'

'He is young. Grant him time and experience and me by your side.'

'As you say, Ree. May it be as you say.'

'And may those who you saved from slavery, from destitution, from disease and from death…stand with me.'

'May it be so.'

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Russ left Garrus's apartment, shaken and settled and horrified and content. Several things not to fear any longer. New things to fear.

He was going to take Garrus's advice and sleep with someone who looked like him, maybe several someones.

He headed to the bar, instead of a booth he sat at the bar, ordered a shot of horosk. Time to celebrate freedom and unbearable stress. He no longer needed to worry if Garrus knew, if someone told him, if Krios was going to do something about it.

He downed the shot, his back to the patrons, raised a hand and spun it once around his head, then walked out.

Several Vakarians followed him.

Krenis smirked and brought a drink back to his table. "Roundup. Lucky bastards."

Adanis said "What the hell just happened, what's a Roundup?"

"Russ either had a very good or a very bad day and a bunch of people are going to have a really good night."

"And they just…follow him when he does that?"

"Wouldn't you?"

"Well, yeah, but…"

"Yeah. Thought so."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Garrus headed back to the apartment, shaken and dreading the conversation to come. He'd had enough for one day. He'd had enough for the decade.

This time he let himself in and found Krios in the same position, sat down in his original seat. "Russ would like to stay. Apologies all around to whoever wants them."

"I do not require an apology but as long as his service to her is commendable I will be content."

"Thank you…for protecting her."

"You are welcome. I empathize that you are unable to do so. I understand this is an excruciating ordeal, I will attempt to make it easier if I can."

"Much appreciated. So…assuming you are not going to sell us all out and aren't doing this for the money or to hand us over to Reaper forces…why exactly…are you doing this?"

Thane blinked and considered what he'd just thought about, who he had just thought about. "Commander Shepard is a formidable woman. Lal Shepard is a charming and intelligent woman. Cara Fanning is worthy of fierce protection. I have spent a lifetime getting what I want for myself, and I have failed to protect those who deserved protection most. My wife, Irikah, was murdered in revenge for the sins of my profession. My son was left alone for the same reason. I failed to protect both of them in pursuit of what I wanted. Seeing that I wanted Commander Shepard and admired Lal Shepard, but Cara Fanning was and is beyond my ambitions and always will be, I can at least protect her. That is what I propose to do. I have little use for payment or what I want any longer, Councilor. Taking her for myself would result in her grief and her loss, and I do not wish to inflict that upon her. She would not consider me as a worthy candidate as a mate. She is worthy of protection, you of all people should know that."

Garrus almost considered asking Krios to call him Garrus…but still couldn't do it, one more step in the direction of confidence and trust that he was not at all willing to make. "I am sorry to hear about your wife. Of course I can understand that."

"I propose that you inform me of when you wish to visit. We will arrange ourselves around your schedule, if you let me know what that is. I do wish to spend time with her as we would otherwise on the ship. I can be of use to her, in devising strategy, in fending off whatever loneliness she experiences in her isolation. I will also leave her entirely to her own isolation when she wishes for it to be so. I will be gone before you arrive. If you could also inform me of when you leave, I will return after that mark."

"All right."

"I believe you are a good man, Councilor. I believe you love her. Were it otherwise I would not have allowed your relationship to continue. You have Reverie, but I have venom. As I spoke of death threats, I will issue a boundary I will not permit you to cross without retaliation. She has set her boundaries, but you do not understand why. I do. I do not necessarily believe that she has set her boundaries wisely, but I also will not permit you to overrun them. If you are a good man, you will understand this. If you are not…it will not matter if I am dead. I will devote remaining favors, resources and money to ensuring that frighteningly competent people will be watching, and will kill you. Cara Fanning has her reasons for deciding that you should not consummate bond, and that is as we both know, not likely to last at the rate of attrition of her willpower. I applaud your persistence or I would be a hypocrite. My wife…was also a woman worthy of pursuit. Nothing would have stopped me. I will convince her that she should consummate your bond. This cannot come from you, or you will both bear regrets that last a lifetime. You must not ask her to relinquish command under any circumstances. You must not leave the post of Councilor unless or until she asks you to under any circumstances. You will stop at whatever border of invasion into her willpower you have achieved at this point in time and you will remain there until she invites you of her own will, and you will know you have earned it, not stolen it. I must bear the penalty for invasion myself, you do not wish that upon yourself. Allow her to tell you in her own time. This is her will, therefore it is my will. It should be your will with her as your Avah, and I wish to remind you of such. As I told Spectre Orbestan, he deserved one warning to do his job, and one only. You deserve the same. I respect you because she respects you and because of your record in office and of service. I see that you love her. I know you will care for Kolyat no matter my trespasses, and because I know that, I do wish you well and wish your happiness, but not at the expense of hers. I also know that will wear on your restraint until you have none. I will provide additional motivation."

"And you don't care if I understand? I don't deserve to understand?"

"It is not about deserving, Councilor. It is about what she chooses to give. You have taken enough. Beyond this point, for your sake and for hers, you honor her will, as I will and have on a mission, though it results in my death or hers. I am not asking you to do something I would not do myself, and I will get nothing from it but the satisfaction of serving her will, you will get a bond mate in truth and not name. You should understand that she loves you beyond the capacity of most to love. If you require faith, have faith in that."

"I feel the need to issue my own standard death threat. I don't need conditions. I'll know it when I see it."

"Of course. As I have said, I deserve death several times over, I need not question it. Death will come to me soon, Councilor. Until it does, I will keep it from her if at all possible."

"Thank you."

"You are welcome. I plan to take her to a tailor, provide her with new clothes, makeup, what is necessary for public appearances. I imagine there are limitations in what gifts you can bring to her, you cannot be caught shopping. If you wish, I can procure things for you, and you can present them without risk of discovery. If you wish, imagine this apartment to be in essence a gift from you. As you watch us, though I would suggest you do not but I doubt you will be able to avoid it, you will see that she finds me attractive, that she even loves me in her own way…but you must always know…she would never allow me to touch her beyond show."

"Yet you have venom."

"Yes, I do. I have used it. I will use it. You are aware of how assassin venom differs from typical venom? I could demonstrate if not."

"That…won't be necessary. How in the hell…what do you mean about convincing her to sleep with me? I'm about at the limit of my what the fuck tolerance for a day."

"This all depends on whether or not you are a man of honor. I believe you to be, I also believe bond to be the one thing that would override your rational choices, that your instinct will be driven to extremes to protect her."

"Doesn't that seem just a bit fucked up to you? I can sleep with her as long as I agree to let her die?"

"I agree to let her die and I will not sleep with her."

"You'd better fucking not."

"I recall your death threat as implied, Councilor. There is no need to repeat it. I am a Drell, I will never forget."

"I say this with as much respect as I can manage after today, please get the fuck out of this apartment and I will tell you when you can come back."

"Of course, Councilor. Thank you for your time."

Thane left and Garrus took the stairs two at a time again, calmed upon seeing her exactly as he'd left her though slightly more rumpled with sleep. Fuck, he worried about venom and sleep. He worried about Reverie. He worried about new things.

He lifted her and cradled her on his lap, nuzzled at her throat and her hair until she woke. Krios's threats had been effective, and he tried to imagine looming motivations beyond shyness for the Drell's demands. Do not press at her set boundaries. It would be…impossible…and that was his daily demand, now his life would be impossible, but he would have a life. She was alive. She was in his arms. That should be more than he could have ever asked to be true, but Krios was right and his own looming motivations made it impossible for him to think.

But he did not doubt that Krios would find out and would kill him.

Five simple rules. Don't talk during Reverie. Don't ask her to leave Command. Don't leave the Councilorship. Don't push at her boundaries. Do not create the conditions where these boundaries are violated through inaction or action.

Wait until she crosses over or invites him herself.

Fuck, what did he mean by convincing her to sleep with him? Is that what they did, discussed the workings of her mind to that depth of intimacy? Under venom?

Fuck.

"Limayeth. I'm back. Russ will stay, he says he's sorry. I say I'm sorry. Krios scares the hell out of me."

"Good, then you're paying attention. I told you he was terrifying."

"He loves you."

"Yes."

"You love him."

"Yes."

"You love me more, right?"

"Oh yes. Always. Forever. No comparison."

"Spirits, say that again."

"No comparison."

"Why…is he disqualified from you touching him, may I ask?"

"He is married, Garrus. He promised her forever. She waits for him by the Shores in Drell tradition. I have asked him to honor that. Love is once and forever for me. You're my once and forever. Irikah is his. I could never do that to her."

"But she's dead."

"So was I. Did you stop loving me?"

"Never."

"He loves her, and he knows it. I know it. He knows I love you."

"He's asked me to respect your boundaries."

She laughed and said "Why should he have to? I've asked you to respect my boundaries…"

"Yes, but he's included death threats."

"Mmm…maybe I should have thought of that."

"I wouldn't believe you."

"Maybe that's the problem."

"Kiss me, Limayeth. No more problems. Not today. Only solutions. I'll respect your boundaries. I don't want to die."

He sounded completely unafraid and un-intimidated and she laughed, and did as he asked, as she wanted, venom long gone and Reverie filtering into her sunlit blood.


	25. Chapter 25

Garrus came slowly to the realization that he was going to be very late for work. First reason was that his brain was shattered after yesterday and moving around inside his head was painful. The second reason was that Cara was in his arms. He silenced his alarm and shifted her closer to him, the sound having woken her enough to rustle but not to rouse. He brushed his knuckles over the side of her throat, pressed mouth plates to the back of her neck.

"Limayeth, wake up."

"Why?"

"Because I said so." He squeezed along her waist and hips, pulling her back against his body.

She yawned and said "Okay, that sounds like a good enough reason."

He said quietly "I realized something out of everything that happened yesterday that I can't let stand. Krios asked me to respect your boundaries…but he said he would try to convince you to sleep with me."

She squinted her eyes closed and said "He what? He said that? In those words?"

"Yes. He said some things about the inevitability of bond and biology…and he's not wrong. I can't seem to stop chipping away at you…and you are…despite all your efforts, easily chipped." He moved his hand to glide along her hip "We're very close…to a fracture plane here…it would only take a little slip when we're both trying to hold back more than enough force to do it…it could come from either of us at any time. Hell, at this point it could come in my sleep. This is not a new point, by the way."

"I'm…also guilty. Not the sleep thing. Not enough expertise."

"I had a bunch of terribly unpleasant conversations yesterday…but I need to be absolutely clear here. I don't understand at all… but… it may be that he wanted me to count on him to convince you…for me. I can't allow that. If there's convincing to be done…which I can't do because he says he'd kill me…you understand the position he's put me in? The position you've both put me in, because… granted… I screwed up, but I haven't screwed up by loving you. I won't screw up by not trusting you. I don't want…anything he says privately held against me later, where three months from now he says 'Your bond mate expected ME to get you into his bed.'"

She started to laugh and said "Aaaaand…if he expected you to tell me immediately, save him the trouble of bringing it up himself? Get us to talk about it with his spin of inevitability…which is…not wrong?"

He stopped, and sighed and said fatalistically "Well…that's terrible…and I didn't think of that. And I'm really…really irritated that you did…" He proved that by nibbling on her neck and making growling noises until she laughed harder. "But if that's true, mission accomplished. I am also on board with this inevitability thing, and now there are two strong votes against your weak one, there's a majority…but I won't collude with him. I will…carry forward his logic though." Did Krios really just manipulate him into bringing up a subject in his own interest… her… interest… their interest…? Not Krios's interest? Again? His brain still hurt. Was there any possibility that Krios thought he wouldn't tell Cara? No loss for Krios either way…once Cara had taken a look at it anyway. Fuck that guy.

"But you're going to respect that I want…need…to stay Shepard…and you need to stay Councilor?"

"I'm going to do my best, Limayeth, but sometimes it feels like you're asking me to do my best to be an alpaca. I can try…I may not succeed. Alpaca or die is a terrible choice."

She laughed until she snorted "I have no strategic use for alpaca. Where did you learn about them?"

"I'm a Councilor, I learn things. Trade agreements. Useful animals. Strategic animals." He sounded haughty and then said "Entirely beside the point by the way. I am in an impossible position."

She shifted in his arms until she was looking at him, her hand stroking over his crest. The drama of disclosures and plans over, she was tired of intrigue, tired of secrets, and tired of seeing anxiety in his eyes and her being beside the point. Maybe Thane had brought it up to give her impetus. Maybe he was right. Between the restrictions of Garrus's culture, the restrictions of his Council position, the restrictions she'd placed on him and the revelations Thane had provided…maybe…definitely…fewer secrets were called for.

Time to be brave. Time to be the right kind of brave.

Tears came to her eyes and she felt her parents' hands on her shoulders, silent urging to do the right thing, no matter how hard. Tell the truth to the one you love. Be the truth. Her parents, two people of different temperaments and different values who had worked together to create a life of beauty and strength, urging her to follow their example fully.

His thumb traced the path of a tear and she said "I love you."

His breath left in an outrush, but the anxiety deepened in his eyes. She wondered if he was thinking she was trying to distract him. She smiled and said "I love you, that's not a distraction. I…okay. Wherever we started, this is where we are. I love you. I don't care about how you bonded, I love you. I don't care that you're the Councilor. I love you. I don't care that I'm Shepard. I love you. Those are all true…but it's also true that I have to care for all of those things or people die. You're right, you shouldn't collude, I shouldn't collude, you are my mate. My truths belong to you. Then together…we find a way. I'm just not good at together…yet. I don't see a clear path. I don't want to fight with you. I know my name is Cara Fanning because I remember my parents. I remember Mindoir. My parents were the most…beautiful people. Mindoir was the ideal place. There I led my ideal life. I was given and was witness to ideal love. I hid them…because I love them…so much. I couldn't bear to have how they lived their life be a target of attack. Only I could put them up as a bullseye. I talk to them every day. I want to be…like them. I want to be exactly like them. Ideal place. Ideal life. Ideal love. They would…love you. Everything you stand for. Your valor and your patience and your heart. They'd be so happy for me to know I have you to love. And I am so afraid that if I don't hide you as completely from the world as I hid them…I will lose you like I lost them. I am afraid of putting you up as a bullseye. Thane stole the surveillance of when I was first rescued, surveillance I didn't even know existed, when I lied to authorities about who I was, when Hale was just a kitten. He found out about my parents, even things I couldn't find out, documentation and name changes…none of my secrets are bad, they're just…vulnerable. On the SR-1 I thought that if you knew what I was really like you wouldn't want to be involved with me. I thought after you bonded to me that if you knew me, you'd regret it…or you'd abandon everything, take me away, to give me my ideals, keep me safe. I want to give that to you. I want what they had…and if I don't give you everything…I'm not giving you enough. I want to give you everything. But…I…couldn't…have sex against a door…or be casual…or give you everything, like I wanted…want to. I don't want you to think I'm using you for sex. I don't know how to do…half…of anything. All or nothing. Family means so much to me…and your bond would deny you your family, your past, your history, potentially your status and livelihood…as much as slavers denied me mine, and that…I can't…I don't know how. I just don't know how. I don't want to be ashamed, I don't want to hide. I…want everything for you. THAT…is what Thane knows. That is what he stole. That is what you have…every day for the rest of my life…or any life after…or any afterlife. Forever, Garrus. Yours."

She added very quickly just to get it out because here it goes…"And you glow."

His eyes widened through that speech and then narrowed at the last blurted unexplained strange… he blinked slowly once and then rolled her onto her back, his forearms down on either side of her head and his knees to either side of her hips. He was right back at the moment when she walked through the door into his office. His. Entirely his. She'd given herself to him, he knew it, nobody would love her more. Now he understood…except…Spirits, he wanted to kiss her until she was melted under him, arching into him…but…

"I glow?" All the incredulousness of the last few minutes squeezed into the question.

"Yes. You glow. I…have something called synesthesia. When things…or people…or ideas…are important to me…I mean…really important…they glow. You've been glowing since you said the word Saren in the Tower."

He blinked. That sounded fake, but okay. One thing at a time. More importantly "Who else glows?"

"Thane."

"Mmmm. So if I'm right…you don't wish to appear crazy…ignorant…delusional…and fanatic."

"Yes. But I am…all of those things…depending on whether or not you believe my inspiration or my direction. Maybe even if you do…"

She was. All of those things. "Yes, Limayeth. You are. But it works for you. I mean, it killed you, but it also got you resurrected. And it also made me fall…in love with you…" He watched her face as though he would see a new person, but he knew her. He had…eventually…known her for the dancer and not the fan. He imagined he could still experience some existential horror if he felt he were bonded to someone he did not know…or want. There was none of that. He wanted her more. He knew enough. He knew her. The surge of power over her invested his limbs, his mind, his cock, he pressed down on her with his abdomen to keep his plates from completely opening, which was not doing anything near its intended purpose.

Fracture plane.

Looking at her he did not feel any horror. She was crazy and he loved her. She was ignorant and they could change that…or not change that, it didn't matter anymore than it had mattered that he used to not know what an alpaca was. She was delusional and it made her brave. She was fanatic and that made her love him completely. She was also… intelligent… beautiful…. resourceful… a unique genius made of all these elements. He realized in a surge of understanding under the rush of power…exactly why she had not told him.

Thane's threats were smoke, just like his threat to Russ was smoke. He wasn't colluding with her…he was colluding for her.

It was not unlike the feeling in negotiation he had when he knew he had his deal. A feeling in interrogation when he knew he had his case. The moment when the scope and the trigger blended into his shot being true. He always savored those moments. This moment and feeling, long in coming, gave him the greatest rush of power he'd felt in his lifetime. Not holding a rifle, not determining life or death over another, not deciding the fate of worlds mattered more than this small…completely helpless woman…under his body…irrevocably his.

He couldn't help it. "Does Thane know that he glows?"

"No, and he never will."

"That…was the right answer. Oh…my Cara. You were so right to not tell me. He…was so very right to threaten my life to try to keep me from understanding that…I have to respect your boundaries…because you don't have any." He bent his head and bit down exactly where he had marked her before. Her neck arched back and the sound…she made…pain and desire and smelling like prey that wanted him. No metal in this woman. He could pull back and look at her face but he knew she'd be beautiful, perfect, irresistible. Instead he tasted her skin, the blood of bond. His world flipped again and he was on the most solid ground he'd ever had under his feet, owned by him, deeded to him, and nobody, least of all her, would ever take her away.

He dragged his nose and then his tongue along the line of her jaw. He paused at her ear and said "You were in love with me before you died. You didn't want to be. You couldn't help it."

"Yes."

He smiled and licked down the tight cord of her throat "If I dragged you out of here right now, called a camera crew, showed them your mark…MY…mark…and claimed you as mine before every living soul and ever Spirit that was ever created…you wouldn't stop me."

"Yes. But please don't."

That made him laugh. She was breathless and near keening, human vocals that were easy to read. She…part of her…wanted him to do it the same way part of him could feel his muscles tense to lift her and do exactly that to prove he could. That was her real problem. That's why…so much overcompensation. There were clothes between them, his plates spread, his cock pressed against the furrow of her tense thighs. Every possible fantasy he could conceive ran free in his blood and his mind. He licked a line up the center of her throat until her head was pressed back further and he felt the keening in her throat through his tongue. "You…knew I was special within seconds of seeing me. That's…perfect. I will never understand, but that's perfect. All that…distance…to protect me…from you. So you made me a Councilor. Because that's what you thought I wanted. But you miscalculated…because I wanted you."

"No…no…you just…felt sorry for me." In her mind he hadn't been interested in her, wasn't until she had gotten him the information to be Executor. Could she have been wrong there? Wasn't everything he'd done up to that point just…gratitude and curiosity?

He laughed again. "Sorry? I think I'd have to kill anybody else who said that, but you…you are a walking exception, or in this case lying down. Maybe you knew before I did, and congratulations, you knew and you kept yourself far away…and maybe that's just who you are. But I knew…by the time I knocked on your cabin door. I should have asked to stay. I didn't have the courage. And maybe…maybe if I'd asked…maybe if you'd let me stay, Limayeth…you wouldn't have died. Maybe I could have protected you then."

Some internal framework of hers began to fall, shaking apart in façade and form. She had nothing to say to that, only tears, her hands moving to his head, one at the back of his fringe and the other alongside his mandible.

He moved himself to fit her hands, head tilted to the side, he shifted down, the rising curve of his fringe under her jaw "So you hid yourself away…and I lost you." He wanted to be angry at her, wanted to…was…and wasn't. She'd thought…she wasn't good enough. Crazy. Ignorant. Delusional. Fanatic.

His.

Well, she knew better now. He needn't point that out. He held still, listening to broken sobs, not moving because his plates needed to close entirely before he tried to shift position.

He was thinking back to moments when she should have known, but she could have seen them as something else …

She should have known when he saved her from Ashley's memorial…his idea in the first place…and told her…and told her what?

"I'll protect you."

He disentangled himself from being her inescapable cage…trying to channel the flooding power and revelation the right way. The right way for her. The right way for him, though he wanted to claim her now, he wouldn't. With all that power now he had concurrent responsibility.

Fortunately and unfortunately, perspectives shifting by the second, disorienting as though his life were bathed in blinding, strobing light.

He sat back, pulled her unresisting into his lap and held her as grieving sobs racked her relentlessly. His hunt was over, and she'd feared he'd go for the kill. And she wasn't wrong. She knew him well enough. He shared in her expressed grief for reasons of his own, rocking her and trailing fingers through her hair, skimming tears from her face with the edge of a talon.

He smiled. She hadn't lied about being expensive and difficult. Limayeth belonged to him, and she had told him that too. Her gates open and trembling, with only the herald on the road in the form of her wit and a Drell…who was what? An alternate glowing protector? Heralds to speak of her strength and power. Thane knew her strength and power would hold him off indefinitely.

But not Garrus.

Spirits, what do I do?

He thought as she cried, pondering his new set of problems that looked much like the old ones, only now he had more responsibility for the outcome.

Then something else shook free, as so many things had been lately. He waited until her tears ended and said with another bemused expression "What do you mean use me for sex?"

She sighed. Bleary watercolor grief was blurred through everything. Honesty. Letting him really know who he was dealing with…right. She said "I haven't had sex."

"Yeah, but isn't 'using people for sex' the equivalent of 'using water for hydration'?"

"Water is a need. Sex isn't."

"How in the hell have you come to that conclusion? I've tried to do some homework here, we're different…yeah, but you have orgasms and can masturbate."

She turned her head into his chest "I don't."

He couldn't help it. "So we're doubling down on the ignorance factor. How much fanatic is in this choice?"

"I did…research…it just seemed that sex…causes a lot of trouble in people's lives. I figured…if I never started…it couldn't be trouble."

"This is based on the idea of using?"

"Yes…what if the brain chemistry's like a drug? It is a drug."

"The trouble is…Limayeth…that you can't start. Of all the…" He didn't have words.

"Just like Reverie. It hurts when you're away. I didn't want to get started…and then feel the need to use people, so I never started. I've never been interested in anybody else. I don't want…I don't care if you see it as delusional or ignorant…well, I do, it will hurt my feelings, but I can't change the idea. I want sex to be…special…not like a glass of water. You're not a faucet I turn on and off…I hate this analogy right now. Reverie…is bad enough. It's wonderful and I turn into a puddle and you could do…anything you wanted."

"Obviously I can't."

"Yes…you could. I already…please…I want to stop talking."

"Oh no. No way." He thought a moment and said "So if I did…this…" He opened his arms and didn't touch her, turned his head away. "If I turn off the faucet…I mean, it's only been at a steady drip, we're not getting anywhere near what I have planned…but if I…for once…stop touching you voluntarily…"

She grumbled "I'd hate it."

"Hah. Knew it. Someone's thirsty."

"I want to stop talking about it now."

"No. Way." His arms came around her again and her head turned more solidly into the wall of his cowl. "This is a good talk, I like this talk."

She sighed.

He narrowed his eyes and said "And you don't get angry, and you don't swear, and you…have been lying…"

"Technically…evading."

"Which is going to stop."

She sighed.

"I plan to be a need, Cara. Fortunately, turns out I am. So you're telling me even you can't tell me about your body."

"Well…you wanted firsts."

"First togethers, Cara. You've got your pronouns all wrong. It's not MY bond, it's OUR bond. It's not MY life or YOUR life, it's OUR life. Together."

She murmured "Technically it's your bond, I can't reciprocate. Plus you said you had to make accommodations for me being human and you've done that. You can't have it both ways."

"I can't have it ANY way."

"I've reciprocated the best I could…I'm not sure I could be more sorry."

"Please don't aim for that."

She was quiet, and her fingers tightened on his shirt, her head turned into his chest still, spilling of more tears imminent. He really wished she'd get angry…so he could do the same. This…disarming…that she did…was not fair.

He said gently "All right. I can't…give you everything you want or need. It's not possible. But I can try. You want family and safety, you want to celebrate bond. I can give that to you. You want your purpose, you want to fight, you want me to use my resources to aid that fight. I can give that to you. I can't give you both…simultaneously, but I can give you them in alternating time frames. If you were afraid I would take you away…that's for good reason. You were…and maybe still are…right…but I promise I won't. I can't give you back Mindoir. I'm so sorry for your lost parents. But we do have someplace, Cara. We have Intai'sei. We could go there. Not forever. We could go there and then…I could bring you back. We'll have two separate worlds for now. Spirits, Cara, let me protect you, let's both take what we want, and then we go do what we need to do. I can introduce you to my mother. She's my family. She'll be your family. Come with me. Spend a week in Intai'sei with me. Have faith that I will bring you back. You said you trusted me once…I can't imagine how that's true."

"I trust you…to be yourself."

"I don't know what that means, sounds like a bad thing."

"It isn't."

"I mean this with love. We are a mess."

"Granted."

"Come with me."

"I don't know if I want to come back."

He smiled and tightened his arms "I'll come back with you. I'll go be Councilor. You go be Shepard. We make those sacrifices together. Limayeth, I could take you away, but part of you would be lost. I want everything too…now that you've let me know it's possible."

She tightened her fist on his shirt again, twisted and said "Yes."

He tilted his head down and pressed his crest to her hair "You'll like my mother. This time just a video conference, but we'll visit, okay? First Intai'sei, then Palaven, and wherever you want. We can visit Hale. When we can…we take a week. Only a week, then we take the strength we have from what we want, bring it back to what we need. Okay? Let me help with your…nonexistent boundaries. That's never getting old."

She snuffled a laugh-cry.

"I don't have a bonding ceremony to perform, but I promise my mother's blessing. Is that enough? I don't know that I can change an entire planet's culture, and I can't promise acceptance…but I can promise love from two people. I know it's not everything…"

"I don't have anything to give you in return, I don't have a place, I don't have a family…I can't even bond."

"Will you share your crazy…delusional…ignorant…fanaticism?"

"Every day."

"How about your… intelligent… beautiful…. resourceful…unique genius"

"Maybe not as much but I'll try."

"Then that's enough, Limayeth. You…are my everything."

She said softly "What if I'm really bad at sex?"

He laughed and said "Let me take care of that."

"I'm really…scared."

"I can see that. I can feel that. Let me help."

"Okay."

"I won't hurt you."

"Sex…looks like it's going to hurt. You just bit me."

He laughed "Yeah. Okay. I'm going to hurt you."

"Knew it."

"Reverie will help."

"Bring Medigel."

"You're turning me on, stop it." He lifted her gently and put her back on the bed. "Stay here."

"I have to get out at some point. I need to eat. Between you and Thane I haven't been able to leave…"

"Just this one last time. Stay here. I'll be right back."

She crawled back under covers, grumbling.

He moved downstairs, called in to work and mentioned a delay, said he'd be in at a specified time mid morning.

Palaven time was tricky but he made a call, it was late but hopefully not too late. "Mom."

"Garrus, I'm so glad to see you."

"Me too, mom. I have a request. Are you alone?"

"Yes. What do you need?"

"I'm bonded to Lal Shepard. I would like your blessing. I would like her…to hear your blessing. Please."

She smiled "Of course. Bring her home to meet me. Please."

"I will. Scheduling is…difficult."

"I can imagine. Yet you've forged rivers, you can forge this one."

"I promise. Invite her."

"Of course. Where is she?"

He took the stairs back up at his customary clip and kept the screen muted temporarily until he pulled her into his lap and then reactivated. "Avah, this is my bond mate, Lal Shepard. We haven't had a ceremony, we can't change how Palaven moves, but our hearts moved to each other."

Cara said a soft, embarrassed and flustered "Hello."

Vilarene Vakarian took her first look at her son's bond mate, nothing but joy and pride "Welcome to the family, I apologize for the limited blessing, but I give it with all my heart. You are welcome in our Madlis."

Garrus added "That's our Clan home."

"Yes. You must come and visit. I understand your desire for secrecy, and I thank you, Commander Shepard, for returning so many Turians to their homes, to their families, there are many Vakarians who owe you their lives and their service. Perhaps we cannot change all hearts at once, but you will change them one at a time, as my son has. Some day there will be no need for secrets. These walls listen when you speak. They are old, and they will not bend easily, but they will listen. Whenever you are under this roof, and wherever you walk, Lal Shepard, you are family. Call upon me, I would be delighted to hear from you."

Cara's smile was shy and grateful, a red flush creeping up her throat "Thank you."

Garrus said "Thank you, Avah. We'll see you soon."

Vilarene inclined her head with a smile "I look forward to meeting you. I wish you both joy." She ended the call and Cara turned her face back into his chest.

Garrus stroked her hair "I have the blessing of my Avah, Cara, that's all a Turian needs. By my body and her blessing, we are bonded. She knows why you don't want to tell everyone, so do I. Is that enough everything for you? No bullseye. Tell only the people who love and support what you are trying to do. You shared a perfect world with your parents and nothing more was needed. It is, in my world, the essence of absolute, nothing more needed."

She said in a shy whisper "It's perfect."


	26. Chapter 26

Garrus pulled her into a tighter embrace for a moment and then relaxed his hold, a new sense of her fragility and not her barriers investing how he thought about her. He'd somehow been too much, not enough and just right in too many ways and too many places to calculate.

She…saw herself as…too much as Shepard and not enough as Cara…and he would not let that be true.

Spirits, how true was it now? How true was her desire to turn back the clock and sidestep him entirely, spare herself the trial of…of a man who never heard no without immediately trying to plot his way around it?

He'd been angry and straining…now he was…now he was scared. She had…no immune system socially…no experience sexually…and no pragmatism domestically. He had forcibly punctured whatever bubble she'd created to protect herself. Her encapsulated, essentially sterile environment escaping, invaded …

He couldn't stop…he knew he couldn't stop…she'd only ever managed to slow him down and now he knew she couldn't even do that.

He moved his hands to either side of her face, thumbs along the curve of her jaw and his other fingers clasped behind her small but significant skull. He was powerful enough to take her life, do anything he wanted with her, his crest moving to her forehead, her colors on his plate, her hair under his hands. He was powerful enough to give her the worlds, but not powerful enough to preserve them. That's what she wanted. As his mother had said, he would change hearts one by one, starting with his own.

He pulled her mouth to his, with her sideways on his lap. He'd give her Reverie and he would talk to her…give her words…and then he would walk away and she would know he could do it. He would try to be her immune system, be her experience, be her pragmatism. Not by knowing best but hopefully by knowing her…Spirits, please…guide me…and let her guide me.

He was too far gone in wanting to kiss her, for better or worse he didn't know. She wouldn't stop him, wanted him…time spent with her lips on his, her fingers along his chest and waist, those were certain things.

He was going to talk because she could not…would not stop him…

He touched his mouth plates to this new woman, old woman, same woman, finally complete woman, shadows and strobing stilled with his eyes closed. He didn't need to see, only to feel. He was cut back to his unyielding instinct and need, sure that the only way to seal the wound was pressure.

He'd claimed her colors like her only priest after she'd died, claimed ownership the moment she was alive and near, his Goddess that no other may approach. Then she'd made it truer than he could have. He tried to pull some shame from himself, but he had none. Only 'YES.'

She was Limayeth when she was a city on a river, unyielding and proud… but now she was Cara. A woman of no land, no allegiance except to him, no home if it wasn't where he was, no family except unassailable memory and what he gave to her.

He held her with the assurance that he would be what she needed, that he glowed. His tongue was on her lips, just her lips, which were closed. He imagined them white-tight with apprehension. He held her face, her life in his hands, gentle glide of the tips of his teeth over her lips, the slide of his mouth plates, practice in kissing her and far too much knowledge, which had been greedily and gleefully gathered, of what made her give way. He tried to intend no conquest, only companionship. Her spine and her breath were tight, almost frightened, suspicious, as he supported her with the press of his elbow on her back.

She was suspicious for such good reasons…he could in fact have this diminutive woman as a virtual slave, invisible collar around her throat whose leash could only be seen by his eyes or held by his hand. She had always been well aware of possibility… and this was even a probability, that he'd grasp her by the throat, pull her mouth to his and invoke whatever words or promise he wished from her, make them true, keep her under. Anything he wanted to ask of her in capitulation… was already true somewhere inside her head. She was afraid of things he hadn't even thought about…yet. The type of resistance required to escape was against her nature and would only be flashing in her eyes with no recourse or defense once he directed his full attention to her.

That…he was going to do that. He was going to have that, if not on Intai'sei, then some later future. It didn't matter if she died, he'd bring her back. It didn't matter if she stayed dead, he'd follow her. It locked in as certainty. Now all that remained was savoring that constant moment of power over her…and then relinquishing it and savoring her power over him. That would be less…satisfying…but she needed it. He needed it because that flash of her eyes and her smile needed a target that was not him, until all her targets fell and only he was left standing.

The invisible leash was an alluring metaphor but he didn't want to strangle either of them with it. He just…really appreciated the leverage.

He'd imagined so many secrets…but none of them had added up and all he'd wanted to do was reassure her that she was his bond mate and his everything. The fact that her secret was that he was potentially her…everything…it didn't get better than that.

He appreciated where he was, moments spent kissing her a continuous blessing, this luxury enjoyed with her incrementally building ardor, her participation as she slowly melted, as her spine bent toward him. Small moments built to her lips parting, her tongue meeting his. Then there was a moment where it was not hers, not his, but theirs, Reverie in the air like wreaths of drugging smoke dragged deep into lungs with panting breath, the truth of devotion like rain sinking into thirsty soil.

Instead of imagining her on her back, eyes closed and breath sharp as he explored her body with his tongue, he was right with her, not racing ahead, not deciding where to go. He would kiss her until she was thoroughly kissed, until Reverie pounded through her, and then he would leave, become him again, let her be herself, and not seek to control her when he left her side.

…yes…that was deciding where to go…okay…but it should be a good place to go.

Spirits, they were all good places to go.

He would try not to seek to control her, but he wouldn't be able to resist the feel of that leash in his hand and tension on the line. Shepard would take care of that, until there was no more need for Shepard and Cara was fully herself, her protective chrysalis shed. He would…protect her…if he had interrupted her sleep, if he had interrupted her metamorphosis, if she would always be exactly as she was right now, if all they had was this kiss…

His body rejected the idea of letting her go as his mind tried to embrace it. His hand moved to shift her until she was straddling him, her thighs as tense as they had been earlier, but this time not strained to press against each other. They were straining to lift her body to reach his mouth as he bent down, her head cradled, her back supported. He drew back the slightest bit, waited to see if she was going to do the same, but instead she shifted on her knees, pressed harder to him, her tongue chasing his. His faith in bond, in her, in him, in them, flooded and twined. His arm tightened around her waist, his hand moved her head to a side tilt. His tongue spiraled around hers and squeezed…and the moan she made breathed and vibrated through him, her scent and sinuous press of her breasts with his sternum blade between them…

Mine.

He pulled back, her mouth trying to follow his, a new surge of power in realization that she wanted him, had for longer than he'd wanted her. He wasn't concerned anymore about Thane, or about her telling Thane anything that would have repercussions, because Thane…was bound to her…and she wouldn't allow any harm to come to her bond mate. Fuck venom, fuck confidences, fuck collusion, it didn't matter. Garrus would let her go, she would take her risks, and she would come back to him. Every time.

He tried to think of words that weren't manipulative and that was impossible with lust-soaked mind, her calves pressed to his thighs and her body sliding along his. He shot for honest. "I'm yours, Cara. We won't be sorry we waited. We…are going to be perfect."

His mouth moved down her throat and encountered the bite marks, his tongue savoring the points. Then he pulled back, bent her head to the side with his hand, applied Medigel to them until they disappeared.

He ran his thumb over the line of her eyebrow, strange texture under his fingerpad, and said "No bullseye. We will do anything for each other, even hide."

Her dazed and dazzled eyes widened and then her mouth was back on his, streaks of bright Reverie shared, and there he stayed happily, joyously, until it occurred to him that he did have to leave.

He could make his point, her point, their point…and the woman who could smile the way she did would understand. He slid a hand up her ribs, circling wide with the curve of his thumb but not touching her breast, moved his mouth to her ear "Cara, love, I have to go. I have to go to work. I've got plans to make." His talon points scratched lightly on her back.

She made a sound of conflicted frustration. More purr than growl.

"You want me to stay, right? Tell me to stay, Cara."

She began to press into his hand, her body sliding down or trying to, her mouth at the side of his throat, teeth edges on his hide and her mindless purr "Stay. Garrus…please…"

Oh…fracture plane…it wasn't…exactly a miscalculation…he wanted that invisible leash pulled tight. He growled into her ear, talon points digging in, with her about to slide her breast into his palm except that she didn't want to lose his mouth at her ear through changing her position. He wouldn't let her if she tried, hand braced on her waist to keep her from doing it.

It should have been harder to say, but with her smile in mind he said in mild shock "How could you? You know I have to go. Trying to keep me from working…shame on you."

She pulled back and up in realization, dazed, meeting his eyes, which held bland mock disapproval of her licentious behavior with such a fine, upstanding citizen. He watched her move the distance to realization to further blushing chagrin, to finer parsing of the moment as her mind tried to feel her way along the curves of his intent, to her smile and then her laugh. She said "You could have just…informed me you understood the proof of concept," her voice was thick and slow, despite herself.

He touched his nose to hers and said "What's the fun in that?"

"Mmm." She rested her head on his shoulder and said "I'll miss you. I'll see you after work."

"One week, Cara. Soon. I'll tell you the dates."

She really had no plans, she was studying the Collector data and without a follow up mission goal at the moment. A week was reasonable. She didn't want to tell him no. "I'll be free."

"We should move the Normandy away from the Citadel, maybe back to the Collector ship, let your crew work from there. You come with me. We'll take a shuttle together."

"Yes sir."

"You're going to be saying that a lot."

"I understand the concept."

He carefully lifted her off his lap, set her back down on the bed where she was mostly boneless and just enough clingy to be gratifying, kissed her as though to wipe the intent that he wanted to leave from her mouth and replace it with the promise of return. He stroked her hair before he pulled himself away because he had to do something important. Sure, work, but vacation. Vacation was important. Having more willpower than she did…so satisfying.

Didn't matter if he cheated. So very satisfying.

He worked his way out of her apartment, back circuitously to his, paused a moment to contact Krios "I have left her apartment. I will be back this evening at 9. I accept the gift of the apartment. It was necessary she have a place to call her own. My gratitude for the gesture that I could not provide for her myself. I would offer to reimburse you but I do not wish to insult you. My compliments to your decorator. The issue of sex will be resolved to our satisfaction, thank you for your bizarre but admittedly fortuitous intervention on several fronts. We have secured my mother's blessing. I have asked for a week of her time, and then I will return her. If you wish to know where, we will be on Intai'sei. I trust you will not place surveillance. She will not require rescue. There will be no need to use venom to arbitrate our relationship. I request you opt out of that method. I need not offer to kill you. I need only suggest…that I could ask her to look at you in slight disappointment, punishment enough. If you make her unhappy in your charade, the execution of which I will attempt to avoid, my response will be renegotiated. Thank you for your assistance, Councilor Vakarian."

It was…a very good day.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Thane received Garrus's transmission, smiled in response. He almost laughed. Several calculated risks not resulting in anybody's death, based on the assessment of the Councilor's honesty and kindness, paid off to Cara's benefit.

She had excellent taste in bond mates. He wished them long years of joy.

He responded "Understood and appreciated. Please enjoy your week."

He considered consulting Irikah's response.

Her voice said slightly bemused 'Why is it that truth is so often not considered in your plans?'

'As long as it results in truth, Ree.'

'Death?'

'Mine only. I would have been at your side sooner.'

'Eternity is long, Tasak. You need not chase or court it so closely.'

'And life is short, and they should not waste it. If you see someone struggling with a problem that has a solution, if they do not see it as a problem, they will not see the solution. Sometimes it is best to take it out of their hands.'

'Should I have taken your problems out of your hands?'

'You…my love…had no solution.'

'Or you did not see it as such.'

'Perhaps I learned from watching you work miracles.'

'Liar.' Her voice was light and sweet and she was as always lovely, his day graced by her presence.

He would strive to be happy for the bonded Fanning couple. Councilor Vakarian was if not good enough, then not necessarily immediately worth killing. As long as Cara remained pleased, Vakarian was safe. Thane hoped that her return from Intai'sei would result in focus, which they would all need.

Thane headed toward her apartment, wondering what or who he would find in the form of a transformed woman. It was not impossible that Vakarian was simply waiting to kill him. Possibly with Orbestan.

He busied himself with consideration of introducing Cara to his son. There was much to do, if he survived the hour or the day.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Russ considered waking up and then considered not doing it, happy where he was, Carig in front of him and…he turned his head slightly…Diryes…behind him. He was not going to move until someone insisted.

Nothing hurt.

Everything was perfect.

Normandy what? Shepard who? He hoped someone had slapped some Medigel on him at some point and he wasn't bleeding. Sheets and mattresses were replaceable and would have to be. It wasn't his apartment anyway. He didn't really remember whose.

Best night ever. Reverie humming heavy and strong he turned his head back, avoided potential fringe injuries, though eyes were also replaceable, maybe he'd go with blue…of course Vakarian blue. He smiled and fell back asleep.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Cara turned into the bedclothes and bit down, frustration and humor and…and mostly frustration. She'd been up in this room, carried up and down, asked to rest, venom and Reverie and…

And she was tired. Not physically tired, but her brain, usually whirring on intellectual fuel had taken a long fall along what felt like emotional stairs, hitting every single one on the way down.

Whiplash.

Sore.

Disoriented.

Possibly broken.

It was a different kind of tired, and the disorientation made her not have enough energy to talk to the blanket she was biting into to apologize.

She was tired, out of her depth, and the tired was all behind her eyes. She didn't know what to think, what to think about, or how to think.

She remembered deciding she wanted to leave the room. Not that it wasn't beautiful but that she just…hadn't been able to, the odd echo of venom making her want to rest, Garrus making her beg him to stay on command…

Autonomy sounded good. Breakfast. Breakfast would help. She hoped.

Things that previously had solid forms in her life seemed to have all been tossed into a blender and she couldn't find shape, her apprehension of the…puree…of disparate ingredients that should not go together, forced to granulate under pressure and thin blades…

Emotional stair injuries. Morning life wreckage smoothie. Bad analogies. Much to be conquered this morning.

She walked down the stairs on her own power, seemingly a new world than the one she'd left, like a maze she had memorized where all the lines had shifted in her sleep.

She…wanted to go with Garrus, didn't she? She wanted this apartment…didn't she?

Did she have any choice…about any of it?

She had…in fact…asked for this. All of this. Her fault, her responsibility if her life now resembled a puree of durian, vinegar, fish sauce and…and…that was gross enough and…breakfast. Stop with the analogies. Please.

She looked around at the beautiful/menacing/alluring/insidious bribes and gifts and the murky motivations behind them. Her mind moved as it always did to the mission, and that was steadying, in the sense that when she opened the door to it, she was struck by a chill. She closed it again.

So…focus on just the apartment. The kitchen. She reached the kitchen, hands trailing over wood and metal, solid things, beautiful and functional and she knew their purposes. It was less menacing in here, even though she knew it was the most baited…maybe. It probably wasn't smart to be reveling in bait, but the rest of the trap was going to do what it did and at least she could eat. Opening the refrigerator it was fully stocked. Things she would want to try, things she would look up…and a door opened in her mind and the draw was weak, leading nowhere right now…she closed it again.

Later.

Milk she knew. Eggs she knew. Butter she knew. She took down a beautiful copper pan, turned it over a few times for the shine and the luster, set it down on the burner, turned the heat on and let the pan soak it in. Eggs were easy, cracked with one hand, a small pleasure she'd practiced that made her smile. No shell fragments. She moved through the steps of a three-egg omelet, paused before putting the eggs in the pan to heat the milk, make a mug of chocolate. Eggs were done quickly. It was not the best shape and…she didn't care.

She had achieved cooked eggs. Go me.

There was the huge picture window so she went and sat in front of it, cross legged on the floor, eating and sipping slowly, hoping that a simple action that she understood could help her create some order in the chaos. She wanted to touch the glass but didn't, not wanting to leave hand smudges on the perfectly clear surface.

Perfectly clear from the inside, but externally and inherently invested with protections and warding and things she couldn't see.

Okay, so there's a theme to today.

She set the plate aside after not really tasting the last few bites. She'd forgotten salt.

So…bland and transparent. Is that like me?

So many voices lately. Drowning out the ones she'd known. Mom…Dad…what do I do?

Your best.

What is that?

There was silence to that last question. Saoirse and Ronan were not experts at intrigue, Turian bonding or Drell machinations.

She heard in her father's voice 'Remember to salt the eggs.'

She smiled.

Thanks.

She looked out the window, eyes following skycars and catching glints of light. Thane wasn't there and then he was and she jumped.

He smiled and sat down loose limbed next to her, looking out the window as she was "I apologize for startling you."

"It's okay."

"Do you wish for company or solitude?"

"I don't know."

"You are well?"

"I don't know."

"You do not need to know, Cara. I will return in a moment."

He stood and took her plate, took her empty mug, returned in a few minutes with a new mug of chocolate and a cup of tea for him, and they watched the skyline together.

She felt safe. Thane was glowing still, that odd and incongruous effect that she no longer doubted. It had never steered her wrong, which she knew…was a self fulfilling prophecy…but she found that rather than question him about motives, rather than ask him…had he intended for Garrus to bring up sex to her…had he told Garrus because it was easier somehow than convincing her…

He was intelligent enough to do it. So assume that's what he intended, all a bizarre and dovetailing crash that was at least aimed toward…something. Resolution. He sought resolution for her. Tears were there but not enough to spill, and the shock faded because she wanted to say… "Thank you, Thane. What you've done…I don't understand…but this place, your thoughts, your mind…they're all beautiful. Terrifying…and beautiful."

"Thank you, Lasam. You are welcome. I have spoken to Irikah…and she says that what you say is also beautiful. Terrifying to me for my own reasons, as I am not a person of chosen vulnerability such as you. She believes you to be a good influence."

A door opened in her that wasn't cold and wasn't faint and wasn't wrong. "I'm so happy to hear that."

"Kolyat has asked to meet you. He has been inspired in his own way to help as he can. I told him that we could perhaps ask you how he could be of help. I think you would also enjoy his company. Perhaps you could be friends. He and I have had name changes that identify us as father and son. We could all cultivate friendship and companionship. A true relationship can develop where gossip imagines it to be something that it is not. It can be a distraction for us as well, and something enjoyable. With the consideration that you will be at the Councilor's side and have it revealed that you were bonded all along, the story afterward is that I was always close for protection, with his knowledge. I wish to create an illusion and a distraction, not a further problem. You also have had nothing in the way of new clothes other than that provided by Cerberus. I would like to take you shopping."

"I would be happy to meet Kolyat. I'd enjoy that. I don't know how to feel about shopping."

"Perhaps I can assist."

"I…hm. I have a confession. I mostly wear workout clothes…loose things…easy things. Because…that's what my mother wore. Farm clothes, work clothes, no makeup…luxury clothing and makeup weren't available…even if they were, I don't know. She's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen and I want to look like her. I do look like her. I don't want to change that."

Thane accessed something on his Omni Tool, brought up a file, indicated that she bring up hers. He transferred it to her and then focused on one image. Her parents. It must have been on Earth. Suit and dress and hair and makeup…and she barely knew them but they were beautiful there also. Thane left that image without comment and then brought up a video clip of her mother in exhibition, hair tied back, no makeup, a face Cara knew well, but had never seen like this. Cara's throat closed except for a small escaping sound of grief and surprise that was choked down. Her mother was younger than Cara was now, and she wanted to stare and replay it. She could. She had it now, recordings made long before she was born.

Thane withdrew his Omni Tool and said "She is beautiful. You are beautiful. Present yourself as you wish. Your mother wore what was appropriate to the moment and brought her beauty with her through all iterations. You will do this as well. I do not wish to make you different than you are, Cara. You will not gain beauty from clothing and that is not my intent. You…do not require improvement. You require an appropriate setting."

She found the file on her Omni Tool, documents and video and pictures, and said a whispered "Thank you…" to the files and to the offer…and she lost herself in Glenn Blake and Carolina Mencin as Thane sipped tea at her side, neither of them speaking.


	27. Chapter 27

She spent a quiet day with Thane before Garrus returned. She spent most of her time alone with her parents, reading and watching everything over and over.

Thane had an itinerary planned. She'd never had an itinerary. She'd only had a schedule. It made her smile. Itinerary sounded so much more Drell. He made certain to qualify that if she needed to cancel or Garrus took precedent, all was easily rearranged. The next few days were about clothes. She had no idea clothes required so much work, but there were different designers and different considerations… apparently… none of which she understood, but it was part of an itinerary so she did not argue.

If and ultimately when that all went well… he seemed determined and she was clueless… then they could begin public appearance, one aspect of which would be to meet Kolyat, who seemed gratifyingly anxious to meet her and that was sweet.

Thane had shifted from vaguely menacing to openly solicitous and… mother hen like. Even her mother had not… henned her this hard.

Okay, that sounded wrong.

He cooked for her, lost Pon-Ifa to her, insisted with slightly hard eyes and voice that he was not allowing her to win, but she did not believe him. Nobody that cared this much about whether she was getting enough sleep or whether or not her hot chocolate was warm would beat her at Pon-Ifa, she was convinced. She did learn quite a bit about the game, so she didn't complain.

She had absolutely nothing to complain about, and his eggs were excellent. He did not forget to salt them.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

When Garrus arrived for the evening, there was not a possible need or comfort that Thane hadn't addressed. Garrus moved through the apartment, found her fast, picked her up and she was beginning to feel between them that her feet should not touch the ground literally or metaphorically.

Garrus said "Five days."

"What?"

"Five days, Limayeth, that's when we leave."

She raised a brow but didn't say…'that was fast' or any version of swear… but… that was FAST. Yes, Councilors got their way.

Five days.

Swear word.

Then he was intending that she did not think but she said fast "Wait, leave on the fifth day or leave after the fifth day?"

He tilted his head. "Leave on the fifth day."

So…four days.

Swear word.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Thane did not believe that four days would pose a problem in constructing a travel wardrobe.

Travel wardrobe?

He asked "Where will you be going?"

"A prefab on Intai'sei."

"And will you be going out?"

"Definitely staying in. Prefab is about the only thing on Intai'sei."

"Is this your inclination or the Councilor's?"

"Both?"

Her itinerary was compressed. Clothing suitable for…a shuttle ride and a closed room arranged, but he described it as 'travel casual.'

When he attempted shoes, she balked at anything with high heels.

Thane was offended, but trying to not scold. He still could not help it, it seemed. He offered lovely torture contraptions with the words "These are much more suitable."

"Why is it that suitable is painful, and lovely means 'tight and binding'?"

"Lovely means 'you' and with some practice you could become comfortable in higher heels."

"I seriously doubt that."

"We shall work on it. I will bring these for practice."

"I'm not doing it."

He blinked at her, and she realized she was going to be doing it. Not to be ingracious she said "Maybe I'm doing it."

"Thank you, Lasam."

"Please, Thane, you have excellent taste, but I do not have the…motivation. If you could find it in your heart to be somewhat less tight, binding and painful…I would be grateful."

"I shall attempt it."

"I have faith in you."

"You are still practicing in these."

"Yes sir."

He smiled.

She was getting henned and fashioned…hard. Drell hard. Drell assassin with opinions hard.

When she was presented with options with much more potential for…her lack of cleavage than she was accustomed, she looked at him, not arguing, but with her brows drawn together. It was lovely, a rich green silk, and completely… for her… unwearable.

She fidgeted and held the neckline closed after fitting, and he gently removed her hand from the fabric, she was probably getting it all… human… with her hand and there was wrinkle potential. How much did this stuff cost per square inch?

He tilted his head in question. She demonstrated hiking it up. He sighed.

His sighs were becoming more and more evocative.

He ran his fingers down the edges of the neckline and her blush was immediate and… feral. She dipped her head down. He closed maybe an inch from either side and was not exactly happy… and neither was she… and a compromise was born because she couldn't look at him and he took advantage.

Heels got lower but not low. Necklines got higher but not high. Clothing got looser but not loose. She hated to disappoint him, but she also would hate not being able to wear any of it because she was too embarrassed to leave her room.

The fittings were entirely private and they both traveled cloaked because…she imagined he just simply could not be seen with her yet, and she maybe understood why after seeing such beautiful things and then putting back on what she traveled in to get there. At the second stop he chose a few things off the rack although they made him sigh, and arranged for the rest to be delivered along with a tailor to make any alterations within two days.

Nobody other than her argued with him about anything.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

After a long day of feeling particularly gauche, Thane had called her downstairs after she'd been in her room studying for a while. When she came down there was a…little fence? Enclosure?

Thane came and took her hand, brought her over and opened a little gate, escorted her inside, closed it and brought out a large box.

She smiled and said "What…?"

Thane opened the box and took out a kitten, handed it to her. She squealed and rubbed noses with the little ball of fluff, about the size of Hale when she'd first gotten him. A little calico, black and orange spots.

And then… he kept… reaching into the box and handing her kittens. All colors, tiny, with her laughing and sitting down to be able to take them one by one, with them staggering on the floor and climbing on her lap, cuddled and shuffled while she laughed.

Thane smiled and said "I thought it would be a good day to be overwhelmed by a barrage of kittens."

She was laughing, and he scooped out more kittens, 20 in all, some in colors she'd never seen, one with a wobbly neon blue stripe on white, another fully scarlet, including eyes.

She squealed, laughed, cherished each one, got little claws tangled everywhere, and Thane was laughing.

She looked up at Thane, breathless with laughter "Come on in!"

Thane looked down at his clothes, hideously expensive leathers "I am not dressed for the occasion."

She wrinkled her nose and nuzzled a kitten in each palm "Come ON, Thane, how many opportunities to do something like this will you get?"

"Once, I imagine. It is enough to see you laugh."

She shook her head and then wrinkled a brow "Where did you get them?"

"Kittens are legal and easy to obtain."

She worried "Where will they go when they leave?"

He assured her "You can keep them all if you wish. They can stay here, we can hire a kitten sitter, or we can return them to the purveyors, they will all be adopted. Kitten rental was easy to secure. Kitten adoption would be easy as well."

She was reassured, wishing them all happy homes, knowing she couldn't keep them all…but she wanted to. She held mostly still so she wouldn't move and hurt one, with her being climbed all over, disengaging errant claws and talking to them. She said with wonder "This is the… best… Thane, thank you."

"I wished to see you laugh, Lasam, and I am not often equal to that task. I appreciate that my preparations are a trial to you."

"Thank you for everything… it's a shame I'm just… gauche."

"You are not. You will set a fashion."

"That is kind of you to say."

"It will become true. You will create a distinct style."

"I would create frumpy. YOU will create a distinct style."

"It will suit you, Lasam."

She believed him and gave herself over to the barrage of kittens, he helped keep them clear so eventually able to lay back completely and be climbed all over until she was laughing so hard she could barely breathe.

She asked "Do you think Kolyat would make a decent kitten sitter?"

"I'm certain he would."

"Okay, I'm keeping one. Do you want one?"

"No."

"You could dress them up in little kitten outfits."

He smiled and said "That is tempting, yet still no."

She closed her eyes and waited until a kitten managed to crawl up onto her face, laughing and almost shaking them off. She opened her eyes and said "Hello" softly, trying not to startle the kitten trying to scramble across her nose. She lifted them up, and came eye to eye with her new kitten, a little brave girl. She was white with spots, a pattern around her that almost formed a ring of irregular spots in brown and black. "Carousel."

Thane very gently gathered the other kittens, the box being not just a pile o' kittens but individual compartments. He took it to the door and someone politely picked them up and brought them back to whence they came, exchanged the box for kitten paraphernalia.

Cara stood up and brought Carousel to Thane and handed her over, Thane politely saying hello.

Carousel sniffed at Thane's hand, started licking at him, which caused Cara to laugh and Thane to freeze, wondering if there was going to be a small cat heart attack. There… kind of was… and Thane had to bring out both hands to steady the small animal, trying to keep her from overdosing on venom, but she wouldn't stop and Thane couldn't exactly throw her at something. Cara was too busy laughing to do anything and the little kitten tipped over sideways in his palm, clearly stoned but definitely breathing.

Cara said "Yeah…I think she likes you."

Thane's lips twitched and he said "Family pets have been a… concern…"

"So Kolyat's never had a kitten. Well, now he will. She's probably your cat now. She has a preference."

Thane shook his head and transferred her back to Cara's hand, little lungs working hard and little kitten pupils not all that steady.

Cara whispered to her "Right there with you, little one. You'd better learn to use the litter box fast or he's going to be upset. And no claws on the furniture. He has ways."

Thane busied himself with everything a cat owner needed at the drop of a stoned kitten. Cara petted her and held her close while Thane unpacked. Cara asked "No little outfits. No teeny high heels? Nothing strapless at all?"

Thane said drily "She is too young. Perhaps in a few months."

"Was that…a joke?"

"It's possible she would cooperate."

"That's a joke!"

"I do have a sense of humor, Lasam."

"Yeah you do! Just not about necklines."

"Necklines, Cara, are serious business."

Cara covered Carousel's ears "Don't listen to him."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

It wasn't until she was on the shuttle with Garrus that she was cripplingly nervous. Their… situation… had all seemed so logical and inevitable… it had maintained a sense of surreal separation from her. Now it was approaching real. No backing out, no emergencies, no last minute reprieve. She hadn't even gotten back on the Normandy, things moved so fast, the Normandy left before they did, and she went directly to a circuitous shuttle shell game. Russ would take the Normandy back to the Collector ship, plenty to do there.

She was becoming emotionally paralyzed, aware there were no exits to bolt to, nowhere to take to cover. The word 'shy' was made of only three letters. The word did not describe… this. Too much buildup. Too much importance. She was bound to be a disappointment. She'd been so busy deferring, and now realizing… that her body and experience… as a payoff… to all that anticipation would not deliver. Why had she made him wait? They could have been used to each other… it never would have built up to this level, with Thane… eyeing her satisfaction levels… and… people's lives threatened.

Thane never threatened her life. Just her logic.

Garrus… yes… he'd threatened her life… but it was a joke?

Right. Joke. And this was the punch line?

Sex… with me… could not live up to all this importance, all this attention, all this… intent.

Thane's intended outcome had been… resolution? So… maybe Garrus would be disappointed, happy to return to work. Maybe Thane knew he'd lose interest? Thane seemed to know much more about Turian psychology than she did.

She had a moment to consider that probably Vorcha knew more about general psychology than she did. She tried… but… she was missing… so much… in experience and application.

Garrus's bond would be consummated, nothing more for his body to drive toward, maybe after that he would be content to remain at his desk, no need or inclination to repeat the experience.

That would be… best… and most likely, right? The overblown passionate haze burned off, duty remaining. He would not be tortured and could focus. The mission would continue with everyone's heads on facing the correct way and steady. She was the one that had mismanaged her own relationship to the point that it became a group problem and a group effort to solve.

It would be her fault… to have him be her desired forever… and have her be his miscalculation…

She felt slightly nauseated.

He was trapped. He could never choose another Turian. Or maybe he could, this experience so… disappointing… that any Turian female in comparison… would be a relief.

She closed her eyes and remembered her description of herself – 'I really can't take much. I don't want to take it. I don't want to prove that I can take it. I am not extreme. I am not in the set of extreme. I am outside that set. In a little tiny fluffy bubble somewhere, alone, hoping not to collide with another harsher Venn Diagram set that likes to shove and swear.'

Add to that gauche by nature.

Turians… did not idealize fluffy bubbles. They ate them… or those bubbles were not worth their notice to hunt. Unsatisfying in the hunt and in the consumption. She wasn't sure which was worse. She was terrified of what she'd seen in the Extranet searches she'd tried to endure to educate herself. Images of Turian and human sex was hard core…and the only way she could be defined as extreme was as a soft, non-core person… contributing to nausea and concerns for Medigel and critical disappointment.

Now she was trying to synthesize that 'education' with what Garrus expected. Which was… what? She wanted him, didn't she? She would if it meant kissing forever… but there were no videos of Turians kissing forever. Turians didn't kiss… they bit.

Garrus was different? Was he or wasn't he?

She recalled two sets of bite marks, proving he was not all that different. She heard Garrus's laugh in her memory, after he'd bitten her 'Yeah. Okay. I'm going to hurt you.' She knew Reverie would make it…not hurt as much…but it really had looked like and sometimes felt like…hurting was the goal. Is that what he wanted? Pain as proof of…of what?

'I don't want to take it…I don't want to prove that I can take it. I am not…in the set of extreme…'

Garrus was that set. She was smart… sure… but once he touched her that was all gone, and she was a fluffy… bubbly… inexperienced… non-extreme… human… who did not even have an appropriate swear to use to describe how upsetting this was. 'Zounds? The first thing he took was her intellect. Second off was her will. The most…forceful thing she'd ever done while he was touching her was to run away.

He would… metaphorically… and possibly literally… plow through every possible iteration of her sexual creativity in moments. He would be disappointed and would never… show it. But he would be. The bright side was… she'd get what she wanted… she supposed… what Shepard wanted. What Thane intended. Maybe all of this was Thane ensuring they'd all have the best chance of executing her mission. Maybe this had nothing to do with her relationship with Garrus. She'd thought she'd seen Thane's end game goals but maybe this was still…game. The experience of being a pawn was unfortunately not new in the recent developments of her life. The Councilor's duty would be assured because of his bond. His disinterest in her sexually would be assured by experience and sated anticipation… and disappointment. They'd have someone to help with Shepard's suicidal goading. No more.

Her heart threatened to speed up to panic.

Garrus finished setting the controls and said blandly "Thought maybe that was engine trouble… but that's just your heart, huh?"

She pressed her lips together and swallowed hard.

He turned to her and smiled "I don't suppose you'd tell me if I asked? In theory it's supposed to be fun."

"Depends on what 'it' is, doesn't it? Especially if I've never…done…" She stopped talking and looked forward, didn't look at him. Couldn't…look at him.

He looked at her, at the familiar and cherished creeping flush at her throat and now double-hammering heart, enjoying her face in profile. He was at peace in his way, everything he wanted right here. He wanted to help…but he also loved her like this. It would likely take still more adaptation to realize the extent to which he made her nervous, always had…and that all his nervousness was unnecessary. It was still a new thing, her open vulnerability, something experienced with the race of his heart, which she could not hear.

His obvious answer to 'helping' was to pick her up and add moans to the composition of Cara…

Instead of making his question rhetorical, which was a mistake with her, he'd speak to her sense of vulnerability and not defense. She appeared to be a caltrop again, still, always, but he knew now that if he gave even the appearance of being about to do himself harm by colliding with her… she wouldn't allow it. She'd protect him. But would she protect him with a truth… or an evasion? His lips tilted and his stomach clenched. He wouldn't get used to her tactics. But protecting him was Cara's core and Shepard shared that, he could speak to all the women she was at once. Odds were right now…she was worried about him and not herself, though it looked like she personally was frightened. He'd have to learn that in all the time he'd spent trying to reassure her…she was worried about him… about everyone… almost never herself. Even when her personal space had been violated and churned, all she cared about was the end outcome. Her life was invaded… and his job was to go reassure Russ. She had felt responsible for his discomfort, her personal blame experienced backward. If she could find a way to be over responsible and remote, she would.

He asked "How often do you try new things?"

"Preferably never."

He heard her in backward Cara style. She was not insulting him. It… could sound that way though. He asked "Can you swim?"

"Yes."

He nodded and then said "If I tried, I'd sink. I've heard that there are a few different ways to get into water with a colder temperature differential… as a human. Jump straight in or wade out inch by inch. Which sort of human are you?"

She smiled and said "I did my own comparison study. Inch by inch in cold water is a series of small shocks over time. Jumping is a huge shock, but it's over faster. More time spent enjoying swimming."

"So given your temperament, it'd be good right now to get over the shock fast. Instead…you're anticipating maybe a series of smaller shocks… over time… and maybe not being able to swim once you're… immersed, so to speak?"

"Learning to swim was not a problem because… the water was indifferent to my presence. You… aren't."

So she was worried about him. "Well, I tried to dive in a few times, you stopped me."

She breathed hard through her nose and contemplated her tendency toward honesty when asked by him, this slide down a slick hillside of honey when she tried to find her feet around him. "I don't want to stop you, but I don't know how and I think… I think… " Her thoughts knotted and pulled tight and she did not want to burden him with this.

"Together, Cara. We do it together. Truth and touching."

She swallowed harder, let out a hard-held breath and said "I… won't be enough for you. Ever. I'm not Turian and not hard core and I will probably… I'm probably just going to faint." She still held back from saying anything about Thane's intentions because that was on her. That was her interpretation, coming far too late to influence events other than negatively. It could turn into self fulfilling prophecy if she mentioned it, put Thane's name in a place where it did not belong and cause Garrus to resent him even more. If she didn't mention it, she could watch and see what happened, and feel his reactions would be more unguarded, more honest. Hopefully? His voice was that flavor of incredulous he hit once he got to a certain layer of her thoughts. This wasn't even the full layer…

"Young lady, what kind of research have you been doing?"

Her lips twitched and she said "The only research available."

"I'm available."

"You're why I had to do research."

"Mmmm. I see your problem."

She really doubted that he did.

He said "I see that you doubt that I do."

She sighed. Her stupid face gave away… everything… around him.

He said "This will go… so much easier… if you're honest. I swear you can do it."

"Empirically I'm sure you've figured out…that's a tough one for me." Plus I don't think it will go easier… at all… if I'm honest.

"For good reason. But it is… you… we're talking about, and you're capable of bravery and courage. Which is the problem here. You're trying to be courageous. You… help me out here, Cara. If I guess and I'm wrong, you're just going to agree with me to put me off. Tell me."

"Fainting wasn't enough?"

"Is fainting painful?"

"It looks like it!"

"You're not afraid of pain."

She chewed on her lip. "I'm not a fan either."

"What… exactly… are you afraid of, Limayeth?"

"It's stupid."

"I'm willing to stipulate that, knowing you. I still want to know. I still… want to help, if you'll let me."

"It's really, really stupid, counterintuitive and I wish I hadn't thought of it."

He waited quietly, watching the convulsive swallow of her throat, relieved somewhat to be told it was foolish. He still wanted to know.

Her lips twitched, she drew a breath and then stopped. Then she closed her eyes, tilted her head down, drew a breath and then blew it back out slowly. He waited. When she spoke some words were compressed and some drawn out, an uneven flow of thick anxiety that clumped and curdled "I'm an inexperienced human. You're an experienced Turian. You know what you want. I can't compete with Turian stamina or Turian creativity or Turian… anything. I lose my mind. I'm not… a challenge and I won't be one. I can't match you. Reverie… with me being… human… and very small… is likely to make me pass out. That… is not what I want to be… my contribution to sex… and I don't think I have any choice. I don't think you have a choice except to accept my… very narrow ability to experience things. I'm not extreme. I won't ever be. I won't slowly learn to be more like you …to take things casually. I… will be a disappointment. You… will be forced to accept that. You deserve better. I'm afraid that we'll leave here…and you'll be glad to go. Relieved to not have to… accommodate someone of that very limited capacity. Someone you are stuck with."

"Limayeth, look at me."

She didn't. He waited. Tortured, near crying eyes moved to look at him and he didn't immediately take her in his arms, and that was a relative triumph, to not drown her concerns in Reverie and make them irrelevant. He could. He would. Not right now.

He continued "You are excellent at imagining impossible positions. It's an excellent fear, it has all the key points fear requires. It means that I will spend a lifetime of regret, with no relief and no recourse, and you could feel the most responsible for that. You believing I have no choice makes it fully your burden to bear. It also means you have an excuse to not trust me. But it isn't true. It won't be true. You can't have it both ways, you can't believe that I'm mindlessly controlled by my biology and discount what mindful and real choices led to that. I loved you before bond. I tried to shield you because I wanted to. Not because I had to. Now it is a privilege and a right. If… and listen carefully… if… I am disappointed, I promise to tell you. Because that promise would relieve you of being in a blocked-in box of feeling 100% responsible for something made up of two people and their choices. Now we have two people and their biology. Okay, so say sex is terrible."

She made a soft sound of distress and closed her eyes.

He almost laughed but didn't, but the humor invested his voice "It could be terrible. Not… with you fainting or even particularly with pain… but as you have discovered, it could be terrible in other ways. All the pressure we've put on this moment and… nothing. The chemistry does nothing for you, or it backfires and you are allergic… or… I'm too big, you're too small. You're right. You are… likely to faint. Why that would disappoint me I don't know. You'd have to explain that one to me. Can you?"

"Sex lasting for 30 seconds and then… virtual necrophilia?"

"Oh. AUGH. Why did you… okay, don't explain. Spirits, your imagination. You need a license to drive that thing! Combat is fine, but here… no. Don't say that again, either… ever. Not even inside your head. Especially not inside your head. Oh… gah… I'm going to… give me a second. Okay…"

She almost smiled, tilted her head down while his eyes were closed, looking away again because she could.

He continued after a moment of bracing himself "What I see there… is… fainting at least… is a likely interaction of human and Turian sex. I'm not an expert and we've probably both watched the same things. Yes, they're upsetting but if it's what we both have to go on… okay, I need another second. Cumulative effect."

She did smile this time.

He heaved a deep sigh "Okay. Porn… is not the same thing as sex. It's definitely not the same thing as love. Visual porn… needs a high dose of something to be effective for the intended audience. You… are not the intended audience. Real sex has more to work with, all the sensory and chemical input available with another person. On screen… there are two things to work with only…sound and sight. All remote. Those elements need to be… strong… to have an effect on the intended audience. So that's not the template to be dealing with here. What happens in porn is… theater. It's the equivalent of a Blasto vid. Big explosions… gratuitous violence… bad or no dialogue…"

She smiled again. That was… reassuring. She should have figured that out. No kidding she was inexperienced.

He smiled at her, paused and then said "Male Turian and human female porn seems to be focusing on Turian dominance, which is just one of those things male Turians aren't used to, it's a specific fetish, a taboo, to have a woman who is going to fall apart fast and feel… everything on every square inch of skin. Okay, give me a minute again here for different reasons."

This time she did laugh, a short bark of humor. He opened one eye, winked at her and said "Shoosh. I have to concentrate." That made her make that sound again and then say quickly an irreverent 'sorry' to his closed eyes, shaking head and long suffering appearance.

He took another moment and said "Okay. So yes… you are likely to faint. But that doesn't equate… dead… or disappointing. Turians function very differently from humans, and as long as your body can… adapt… which it seems you at least you have the potential to do… Confession here, I am horrified at how humans give birth. Promise me you are not doing that."

"I'm… pretty sure I… can't? I'm not missing something am I?"

"You're missing Turian existential horror at that happening to you. Turian females have abdominal plates that open. Not…okay, sidetracked. Kids, fine, later, that's another discussion, adoption or whatever, sure. You carrying a child? No way. What's the saying, putting my leg down?"

"Foot down."

"Both feet… down. Take advantage of modern conveniences like… other people having your children for you..."

"Okay." She was stunned to quiet. She really hadn't thought about children at all. It wasn't possible naturally. He'd… thought of that. Enough to look? Do research? She wanted to ask if he wanted children… but… yes… another discussion, later. If they survived. She was still touched that he'd wanted to know enough to do some research. Research was devotion, the center of her nerd heart warmed. She didn't want to let it pass entirely… but she didn't want to talk about raising children with the Extranet-Blasto-Porn images crowding in on her head. She wasn't worried about childbirth; she was worried about just the possibility of attempting sex.

"There isn't just Turian and human porn, there's human and human porn. I can't discount the painful, but I also can't be sure you can't… accommodate. Yes, there's a possibility we can't, or maybe… not all. Definitely some, Cara. I will expect, want, and need… if we can join… which I think we can… to remain joined while you sleep."

She started and said "What?"

"Something you can't research. You should ask more questions. There's a blackout on bonded Turian sex, you can't find that out from anybody but me… or now my mother if you had the courage to ask, which I doubt you do."

She closed her eyes, imagining that conversation 'So, Mrs. Vakarian, I hardly know you, but could you draw me a quick diagram…?' She said "I… um… yes, I'll ask you."

He chuckled at her dry, faded tone and then said "I already… have the expectation of hours of you sleeping with our bodies joined, me awake because you sleep much more than I do… so four hours of us sleeping together, four hours of me being awake… inside. It's not just about Reverie or sex. It's about being together as much as we can for as long as we can."

There went her most insane blush. He smiled, she swallowed hard.

"I suppose I'm predisposed to… somnophilia. I'll insist. You may not have much to say about it. You fainting… you asleep… I don't see how holding you in my arms, joined and sharing Reverie for hours… is in any way a bad thing. You're not athletic or creative? You're not Turian? I don't see how I could have made the critical error of judgment to bond to you because I thought you'd turn out to be those things. Has kissing me not been… enjoyable?" He smiled because he knew the answer to that one.

"It's wonderful… but clearly… not enough for you."

"Not enough for you either."

"Yeah, but I don't know what happens next."

"I do. You could ask."

"…you don't really know either."

"I can make very educated guesses, Limayeth. I've grown fond of kissing for hours. My next personal steps involve finding out how a human female orgasm works. Since I have no idea that's going to take a while. After I figure out how that works, it's still going to take a while."

She closed her eyes and leaned back as he said "I definitely want to see if your whole body blushes like that." He gave her a moment to soak that one in, then said "If my life with you, Limayeth, is hours of kissing, finding out what makes you blush, finding out what makes you faint… and enjoying every moment of that, with you awake or not, that will be a good life. I promise. If I am unhappy… I promise to tell you. I need you to believe me, to trust me, that I would give you that, because I understand if I don't… you'll create something… unnecessarily fearful in your head and have that hold the place of what should be something joyous and shared. You should not transmute that into fear and distance because you're used to making all decisions as absolutes and alone. You need to learn to compromise. You've been afraid of my bond being too strong, now you're afraid of it not being strong enough. You need to make room for compromise being something that works, that maybe we can make it work because we love each other and we're strong, capable people."

"I'm not sure if it works out well… that I want to leave. Ever."

"You won't. I won't. Withdrawal from Reverie will be physically painful. I imagine that on our last day here I am going to begin to regret the idea of just handing you back to the galaxy without conditions. Just like you right now are beginning to regret agreeing to a week alone with me, not knowing what will happen, being afraid of my expectations. I still will bring you back because I have to. I prefer that we part for duty and not displeasure, and rejoin again out of joy and not duty. I won't do that to you. I promise you, Cara, I won't do that to you. You tell me what you need, I will try to understand and help you find a way to seeing that it's what we need together. If I have a need, I will make it known… I have a track record of doing that. You should establish one yourself. I'm not the one who has a problem with going after, asking for, and getting what he wants. You are perfectly capable of doing the same. You just need permission and practice. And if you faint… every time… however long I expect sex to take… two hours, four hours, six hours… I'll just do… something else for 5 hours and 59 minutes and 30 seconds."

"Yikes."

He laughed and then she looked at him and laughed, said a quiet "Thank you. Somewhat less terrified of one thing, more terrified of other things."

His smile was lopsided "You have provided me with more than enough challenge for one lifetime, Limayeth. You don't need to worry about that."

"So you're saying you like the quiet."

"I like your quiet, your talking and your moans… and when you stop crying."

"Don't you have to? Like it? Because you're bonded?"

"Don't you have to… be in this shuttle… terrified… because you made a choice?"

"…yes."

"Then yes. I'm not sorry. I'd really like to think that you honor my bond as something chosen before it was something without a choice. I don't want a choice, that's… why I chose. I had options. I didn't take any of them. I didn't create any options for myself. I didn't want them. Hell, I had Russ. Have you seen that man? He's awfully attractive."

"Did you know you had him? Really?"

"It was impossible to not know I had Russ. People liked telling me. People that weren't Russ. I am certain I could have made a pass at him myself at some point and he would not have told me no… but although yes… he is a very attractive man, I was taken. By a dead woman. You are not dead anymore. I plan on celebrating. All the things you think I might regret not having… a Turian partner, an active and athletic Turian partner… I could have had that at any point in time while you were gone. Instead I chose honoring your memory. I was going to spend a lifetime with that rather than someone else who might or might not faint."

"I'm… glad I'm better than nothing."

"For once, Limayeth, take a compliment and don't find the dark side immediately. At a certain point I hope you can have faith in me the same way you have faith in the fact that I glow. The way I have faith in you despite your crazy, though I will still complain and you can still complain. Am I still glowing?"

"Yes."

"You'll tell me if it stops?"

She was silent and then said "That sounds like a terrible thing to tell you."

"It's important."

"I hope it never happens."

"But if it does?"

"I don't… I don't know. I wouldn't have an explanation."

"We work out answers together, Limayeth. Maybe it would mean I no longer require faith because you have experience. Maybe I'd look forward to that day."

"Maybe you'd hate it."

"Maybe I'd hate it. But we'd be concerned together, or content together with sharing something unknown. You are not always… clearly hardly ever… going to find your way through a social situation alone. You need practice, you need faith. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about… glowing?"

"No. Ask."

"Does water glow?"

"What water?"

"Any water. You need it to live. Drinking water? Air? Something you need to live every day?"

She thought a moment and said "No."

"So maybe it's an embodiment of intuition, your lighting judgment. Highlighter so you pay attention."

"That's what happened with you. I also knew the Alliance was where I was going to be because the cruiser that picked me up on Mindoir was glowing."

"You didn't end up being attracted to a cruiser, and you didn't know you would with me immediately. So you have to… figure it out? Thane's glow was different from mine?"

"Yes… my impression of you was loyalty and kindness. My impression of him was 'terrifying' and 'that man could kill a lot of people, I need him.'"

"So maybe… if I stop glowing… it's because you know my place in your world. Like water. Like air. You don't have to think about me. You don't have to pay as much attention."

"I want to pay attention."

"I'm glad to hear that. I'll also be glad when you trust me. Maybe not glowing would be a good thing. I'd like to be your water."

"So I could…use you for hydration and for sex?"

He laughed. She felt unbearably racy for saying it. While she was being racy…when was she going to get the chance to ask again? "So you are…were…bisexual? I don't know…but I should know? Are most Turians?"

"Here's a secret I probably shouldn't tell, but screw the Hierarchy. Un-bonded Turians are opportunistic. Access to Reverie is a powerful thing, and it takes another person. An un-bonded Turian is socially considered a child. Turian women have to express interest in order for a Turian man to be able to respond…but that isn't the case with males. Between men, anything goes. So…everything went. I was lucky. Being a Vakarian helped, being my father's son even more, that's a lot of status. I was usually pursued one way or the other and I rarely slept alone. Predominantly women, some men. Russ… well, he never made a pass at me. I talked about you too much, I had strange markings on my crest I wouldn't explain, I didn't invite anybody to ask about them, ignored the question if they did. When I put these marks on my crest I decided I was your family. You'd given me your message. You'd given me everything you owned. I wanted to wear your colors though I didn't have the right to them. You… talk to your parents every day. I… talked to you. Every day. I think that's also partly… why I insisted… and insist… on talking to you every day. I need you. I needed you. Having you back and not being able to talk to you… impossible. You were already a daily habit. Not having your real voice was… painful. I couldn't talk to you, and imagining you was… now wrong. Russ... as much as he is boldly barefaced, is and was protective of my position, never would have suggested it, never did, wouldn't undermine what allowed us to work closely together. You… on the other hand… you never stood a chance. I know I did the right thing… for myself… bonding to you. I'll try to make it the right thing for you. I'm grateful to hear you were… in your way… inclined to agree."

"Are you going to miss…opportunistic leeway?"

"No. Bond means that unless it's you… I am not interested. I'm locked in. Not someone like you… not someone resembling you… you. It's chemistry but it's also choice. I think I made the choice aspect briefly after your death. I also knew bond itself, the opportunity, was lost, but I honored the choice. It is possible that Turians with broken bond… those who have lost their partners… can find solace in each other, but that is rare. Most settle for… pining. I was comfortably pining before you came back. It was working for me. I had my focus on my job, the job you gave me. It was in a way our job. Just the same way Intai'sei became our place. You were my Avah. I had developed a private life and a goal – to keep you alive in my memory each day. I did that. I had opportunity, even pressure, to be involved with someone else, to cement my adulthood, to form an alliance. I didn't want it. I didn't take it. People knew me well enough to not offer, or if they didn't know me well enough and did offer, I politely ignored them."

"Liara said you were a powerful, enigmatic…entirely socially unreachable gentleman."

"I was. I am. I will be. Now and then…you were my social influence. Which meant…I adopted your style of not entertaining romantic advances. You're socially a bit of a dummy. It was helpful then, it's refreshing now."

"I hope you can endure being… refreshed… for a lifetime."

"I'm counting on it."

She smiled and said "Thank you… I… I feel better. I'm still terrified."

"Just rely on your friendly powerful, enigmatic, socially motivated gentleman."

"And please forgive me for my lack of… any of those attributes."

"You're friendly. You're very friendly." To prove it he extended his hand to her and she took it. Now was when he was willing to allow Reverie to speak for them both. He sat back in the pilot's seat, would be aware of the controls, but the shuttle could manage on the settings to land itself. He wanted to taste the patches of red on her skin. He said "You have choices, Cara. This week is for what I want, but it's time for getting to what we want. You… want things for yourself. Don't you?"

She nodded against his chest.

"Then let's figure them out together. Don't… be afraid. Do… be expressive. Do you want to rest until we get there? I'll hold onto you. Do you want to talk? We'll talk. Do you want to kiss –"

The word was barely out before she lunged for him.

Friendly lunging was very good.


	28. Chapter 28

She was asleep in his lap by the time they landed. They were both Reverie sated, that humming influence slowly fading from his blood, bright red hair and her scent promising more time with her than he'd ever been able to spend.

He lifted her, adjusted her in one arm and began unpacking. They'd have starved if he hadn't thought of bringing food. She brought clothes. New clothes. Expensive luggage. Thane's influence. They suited her, soft greens and browns and golds, rich fabrics and fit. The same colors that were used to decorate her apartment. Had Thane chosen those as well? Of course he had… He was not going to spend his time here thinking of Thane.

Yeah, he was. Just one last quick thought… I'm here, you're not, I win.

Thinking of Thane wasn't as painful and didn't make him as angry as it might have with her in his arms and Reverie bubbling, by nature exclusive, making subjects other than her dull. Maybe he'd just think that these gifts were by proxy from Garrus as Thane had offered. It was a bullshit offer, accepting it was selfish and ignorant, but it helped him not want to kill Thane as much. He couldn't kill Thane at all, Cara wouldn't like it. Garrus could not dress her but could undress her. He could not be seen with her in public but he had her all to himself privately. Could not eat a meal with her out in the open but could feed her with his fingertips if he chose. He knew he was lucky.

He was also resentful of what he couldn't have, but he could not fault Krios's taste. Did that make it worse or better? Cara seemed to know nothing about what she was wearing. Better. She deserved better. Thane could not have managed anything better from what Garrus had seen.

Still irritating.

He didn't believe Krios so easily… okay it wasn't so easily… disqualifying himself as a lover. Appearing to accept it so totally placed Cara at ease, but Garrus did not buy it, easily imagining a different path had Garrus not been there. A little less forthright about his wife's death… or a little more venom… and tada… no more disqualification… and Cara alone…

He pressed his crest to Cara's hair, took a deep breath and changed his internal subject to her and not the Drell's interest in her.

He carried in supplies and luggage, then the boxes of what she'd left here before her death, intending to have her reclaim them in privacy. Everything that had been here had been hers and then his, and now theirs. Her scent was nearly gone from them. He thought of maybe spreading some of the stuffed animals along the bed but was immediately vaguely disapproving of the idea. He was oddly jealous.

He wanted her to himself, the Drell banished and then previous acquaintances disqualified.

He also could imagine her anxiety at having sentient witnesses with personalities and theoretically long-term memory. That would further inhibit her… and maybe him. He'd thought of Sprinklebits as being remotely approving of his actions as Councilor, he had to admit. He'd even talked to her. Quietly.

He moved very slowly. There was fortunately no major temperature difference between the shuttle and the enclosed port, no wind, and she stayed quiescent through the several trips back and forth, only moving to put her arms around his neck and drift back down.

He didn't want to put her down and have her wake up alone.

He didn't want to put her down for any reason.

He knew the place well, he had been here often. It had been a tradition to spend a week at Intai'sei a few times a year. He'd spent a few busy days installing a Turian shower, which worked with particle and air jets. Water was not a friend to Turian plate. He'd enjoyed the quiet and the view, time forgotten and measured only by sunset and sunrise. He'd appreciated the closeness to her, the silence and the exclusivity with her memory. He'd appreciated how she had gained the place and how he'd helped her do it. He'd contemplated the bizarre happenstance of being able to meet her only a few years after they would have been compelled to kill each other, earning this place by replaying a scenario where his people slaughtered hers. Everything about them meeting at all veered toward the improbable. She had been a brief gift and a lasting inspiration.

He was better able to dream and imagine… and grieve… here, away from Executor or Councilor, able to be Garrus Vakarian without a title, as he'd been on the Normandy, someone recognized for personal merit and… and someone recognized by her. He'd imagined himself as Garrus Shepard. He had not imagined sex, just the right to her colors.

The difference between Garrus Shepard and Garrus Fanning seemed simultaneously worlds away and unimportant.

He had made it a place where sentimentality was welcomed. It was now rebuilt, secure, comfortable for one human and one Turian. He'd left and even improved some human amenities, adding Turian equivalents. All the windows were impervious to surveillance and it was safe to watch the sun through them. He was nostalgic, not stupid. He never told anybody where he was going and a one-way through a Mass Effect gate shook anybody trying to trail him.

He retrieved some water from the cooler, something they could share. He sat down with her in his lap in the accustomed single huge and comfortable chair in the center of the open glass bay. He would have put two chairs here… but he had imagined her on his lap, like this. He watched the sun cross the sky and felt the historic symmetries click into place one by one, complicated tumblers through time resulting in an open opportunity. He wished he could reach back across time and show himself this moment, as though it would be possible here to invade his own dreams and reassure himself.

He had been sure then. Perhaps it had worked. He spent a few earnest moments making the attempt.

Things could have gone very differently. He could have chosen instead some path of mindless oblivion, provoked to his own suicide with readily available rage and grief. If he hadn't reinforced what she'd meant to him periodically she could have slipped from 'is' to 'had been' like her scent in the containers, until all that was left was entropy and unexplained significance, covers left on and never opened again like coffins.

What if he hadn't found her message at all? If he hadn't been stubborn and obsessed enough to search for something as unlikely as she was?

He could have been glad to see her alive but nothing more. An incalculable loss.

He could be bonded to a politically inclined and savvy Avah who would have bonded to him as deeply as he bonded to her, with nights in her arms and not this woman's. Lal would be a faded memory and he'd never have heard the name Cara. He'd have someone else's paint on his face, a pattern with gravitas and legitimacy. He might have thought it was fated and perfect and right. It wouldn't be this, whatever this was, this strange circumstance, as unpredictable as the feel of her hair or her skin or the touch of her… alien… thoughts. It was a mystery how she managed to count herself as completely harmless while being one of the most terrifying people he'd ever met.

That she thought he needed somehow… to be further challenged by her… ever again…

She did not understand. Two years of counting himself as virtually dead and marking time until he died… waiting until the responsibility killed him as it had killed her… Those truths would never, ever allow him to take a breath in her presence without appreciating it. She had come back, hopeful and bright, seemingly the most solid thing in any room, unquestionably alive… and she wondered if she was enough for him.

Every breath in your presence, Limayeth, is a miracle.

He supposed that would make him sound pathetic, but he didn't feel that way. He felt… loyal. He couldn't even tell her that bond made him more loyal. Her death and his posthumous discovery of her message, her desire for more time together had meant more to him than a living Turian woman's devotion, and he couldn't explain that to her, she didn't believe him. She hadn't seen him for those two years. She thought perhaps it was all bond chemistry. How could he prove it was otherwise? She'd only hear it as reassurance, something he was 'forced' to give her.

Maybe someday they'd believe each other. In the meantime… with her hope… and his loyalty… half a million Turian lives were saved. No Turian woman could have given him that. She did not understand that she was a miracle, a walking, breathing miracle, and she took miracles so much for granted. His miracles seemed smaller things, not as worthy of bringing to her attention. He would try to show her. She seemed to have an immunity to grand or poetic gestures, attributing them to the kindness of the individual giving them… Krios gave her an apartment and a wardrobe worth a sizable fortune, Garrus gave her his heart when she wasn't there to receive it… instead of to the strength of her inspiration.

Garrus wondered briefly how often Krios had made an advance only to be ignored, rebuffed or blushed into effective submission by her stubborn and inherent immunity to significance. He was mean enough to smile, then empathetic enough with the man he had been for those two years to imagine briefly the loss of the Drell's wife.

Perhaps he should believe in the strength of her immunity and accept that it would require a different universe for Thane to have Cara claim him as hers. Perhaps he should remember that saving Kolyat's life, something they'd both done, was a debt worth more than a sizable fortune.

Maybe later. He preferred dislike bordering on antagonism, it was more comfortable.

Garrus didn't want to seem to value her body so little… but in a way he did. It was her Spirit that had guided him for years. Since she'd been back she had lived up to the promise of her Spirit beyond his imaginings. He'd considered himself guardian of her Spirit but had not done her justice. He planned to correct that.

He had owned her, honored her so completely while she was dead… it was impossible to share her or let her wander beyond the confines he'd decided were true now that she was alive again.

Physical attraction before bond…not as strong…there bond made a difference, defining her as his standard of beauty. Even without that, he would have done everything he could to assure her that she was desired. He could not tell her that her species or appearance did not matter. But it hadn't and still didn't. He'd been attracted to people for their appearance, and that had been a different path to a different place. He had been deeply in love with her Spirit and that seemed to make her body… not a concern as he was trying to find his way to her when she was still alive. When she'd come back he'd had her kiss, but he'd also had to face the possibility that maybe he would never be able to join. She'd asked him to defer it indefinitely. He had found his place in pining. He had a lot of practice pining. It was better than being branded a deviant and rejected… as he really should have been, but he just couldn't stop being proud of himself for that moment.

With her insistence on secrets he'd considered perhaps she'd had some physical disqualification. Perhaps she had physical reasons they couldn't join. Maybe it was bond that helped him find peace with that because she wanted it, maybe he'd already accepted a lifetime of no sex. Bond had a way of making things seem perfectly normal despite cognitive dissonance. He hadn't felt rejected, he'd only felt that whatever support she needed, he would give. It had resulted in him making sure she knew she was desired while she was afraid of exactly that. For good reason.

He'd accepted Spiritual rather than physical bond as more than a blessing. He would still… always make it absolutely clear that she knew she was desired and he would do everything he could to make her feel wanted. It was sexual etiquette. Manners. If he didn't care for dinner he would still praise the host's efforts. If he didn't like the sex he would still make certain that the person felt desired. No person should be damned with faint praise at a vulnerable moment. Certainly not his bond mate. She'd told him she trusted him to be himself, and in a backward way, this was him doing the same. Whoever you are, Cara, that will be enough. I won't let it be… not enough.

She was right. He'd never tell her if he were disappointed. He'd lied to her about lying to her. He didn't feel any guilt. Maybe he'd lied to her because he was certain that disappointment could not possibly overwhelm what he already felt. He hoped so. She held too many hard truths in her heart and head and hands. He would not be one of them… again. He wanted her eyes to clear and her tears to stop and to be able to see her smile… all of her different smiles from the terrifying to the tender. She had enough to bear, he would not add to her burdens. He wished to lighten them if he were given a choice.

He sipped water and watched the heavy bright sun, the way it cast spark and shadow in her hair and the way the pace of their breathing rose and fell together, not knowing if he'd matched his pace to hers or hers to him in her sleep.

He'd sat here before, slowly getting drunk, subvocals building because nobody would hear him. Now he was here with her, and he didn't think she could ever understand the difference between who he had been then and who he was now. He did not want to introduce her to the man he had been in here alone in the dark. Perhaps telling her would make her feel he was so devoted to her memory that nothing about her as a real woman could change that. Not wise. For him it reinforced the idea that he had courted and cultured his own fate, that he knew she could have slipped away from him if he hadn't held on so tightly.

She shifted and her eyes opened. She looked up at him and he had her smile and her clear eyes. She was so beautiful. He said softly "We're here." Mostly when this place heard his voice it had been swearing at a stubborn vent or drunken and maudlin… not gentle. He could offer better things now to her, to here, to them.

She looked around, out the transparent bay to the sun. "It's beautiful here. Stark. Peaceful."

All those things. He gave her the water bottle, she took a few sips and handed it back. They sat in silence until her stomach growled and she sat up suddenly "I forgot food. Garrus… I… forgot… food. Oh…oh no."

He smiled and pressed his lips to the top of her head "It's okay. I didn't forget."

He had a moment of wondering if she was going to look disappointed that they couldn't go back and pick up food, gain a reprieve and a delay, but she looked grateful and collapsed back onto his chest. "Thank you. I'm… an idiot."

No way he was agreeing with that. Instead he said "You're nervous, not an idiot."

"So much for strategic capacity."

"Nervous. I took care of it, so it means you relied upon your ally, who came prepared."

"Thank you, ally."

"You're welcome. Hungry?"

"Yeah."

He carried her into the kitchen, put her on her feet in front of the open refrigerator and showed her the catered prepared food, things he'd noticed she liked. Food he could do for her, since he entertained humans often in meetings. Ordering it personally and asking for it to be packaged or preserved wasn't out of the ordinary.

She stared. "Is that…a whole lemon cheesecake from Nimet's?"

"Is that what that is?"

"I love you. Best. Ally. Ever."

She started to pull it out and he asked "Isn't that dessert?"

"Technically yes, but I'm on vacation. I'm eating this all week. 12 meals straight."

Twelve meals and they would only be partially done with the week. Treasure.

He grabbed an ale and some quick-cold-fish-something, he didn't care. He watched her laboriously cut the cake into even slices, happily dishing one out. He sat at the simple table and thought… just these few moments, not her ghost, really her. She was making poor eating choices, he was facilitating that, and he was happy. He'd learned apple juice didn't go with everything, so he'd also brought milk and water, and he wanted to learn the combinations. Milk. Milk with cheesecake. Human food did not smell good. He didn't tell her. All he did was smile and then decided he should remember what he was eating because he should be able to recall this all clearly. Marilet fillet.

The chairs at the table were across from each other but she ignored that setup. She dragged her chair to sit next to him, the legs of their chairs touching and he was again… happy. Inordinately happy at that, that she wanted to be near him, didn't embrace an excuse to be further away.

He was getting nervous. He didn't really know what to do other than feed her. He didn't want to rush her, didn't know if he should immerse her so to speak, didn't know… and wanted her to tell him.

He was happy with Marilet, cheesecake and touching chair legs. He'd be happy with falling asleep clothed and having nowhere to be tomorrow. He was happy with time with her, he wanted to get it right for her, and that was always harder than getting it right for himself. What the hell was right for 'them' he had no idea.

Would he be okay if they left in a week and they hadn't had sex?

Yes. Yes, he would. He had her time, he had her attention, and she appreciated cheesecake and sat with him. That odd unexpected gesture of her pulling her chair to him and… and now he wanted more of that, more of her wanting to share his space without him overwhelming her. He had to prove he could bring her back under every circumstance, and he would. He'd better practice his best alpaca impression. He wondered if the person that he would be a week from now would be trying to reassure him that it would be okay. He hoped.

She finished every swirl of yellow and white, scraped the plate and then reached for his hand. She looked at the empty plate and said slowly "So if I'm going to learn… how to swim… do you suggest the sudden immersion method or the set of small shocks?"

He stroked his thumb over her knuckles and said quietly "How about a series of small shocks and then one really big one?"

"Was that…a joke?" She was blessedly teasing.

"Maybe."

"I'm not sure you're taking this seriously."

"Well, I don't know how to swim. My lesson would have to end in drowning."

She laughed and then said "That's the big shock?"

"Maybe."

She stopped and swallowed hard, took both his hands, looked him in the eyes and said "Garrus Fanning… who I am lucky, incredibly lucky to be blessed with as a bond mate… will you please excuse my nervousness and lack of experience? I think… maybe it would be better if I came to you with more… more of what other people have, more of an expectation of… sanity. But I didn't and I can't and I won't. You… deserve the best. I've always wanted the best for you and I'm sorry if I didn't think I was that. I'm sorry if I implied we were stuck with each other, or that you'd lie to me. I'm blessed. I know it. I'm sorry if I have ever, ever made you feel as though you were a burden. I'm sorry I was too shy to let you know I found you devastatingly attractive. I'm sorry if I was too shy to think you could be interested in me. I should have done so many things differently. Would you please forgive me, and can I start over here, with you. Do you know… how many hours I'd spent on the Normandy pacing my room trying to figure out how to talk to a Turian?"

"Saying 'hello' works."

"No, it didn't, you told me a story about Saleon…"

"Oh. Right. Maybe say hello more than once."

"See, now I know that. I was going to ask you to work on the Mako's suspension and sensitivity on steering. I couldn't bring myself to do it."

"What? She was perfect!"

"No, she wasn't. She could have…never mind. Me, able to order anybody to do anything, and I felt bad trying to ask you to fix her."

"…because she was perfect."

"No. Because… I was scared."

"Because you were WRONG."

She laughed and said "I was wrong about a lot of things. Would you please forgive me?"

"Not if you're talking shit about the Mako."

She said "Fine." She pulled her hands back and fiddled with her Omni Tool for a moment. Then she showed him the screen. "You could have done this."

He grabbed her arm and pulled her Omni Tool closer with an "Oof" from her. He read the specs and said dismissively "That wouldn't have worked…that would set off the…"

She held up a finger, swiped the screen and the next set of specs appeared. He narrowed his eyes and sighed, and then looked. She said quietly "It's a combination thing."

He sighed again and said "Fuck. Yeah… that would have worked. DAMN it."

"So it seems not asking was a good instinct."

"You don't mind if I swear, right?"

"No, not at all."

"Why don't you swear?"

"That's a long discussion."

"What, we don't have time?"

"I don't want to… distract from… swimming."

"Mood's ruined. You had to insult the Mako?"

"Not… the Mako. Just your maintenance of her. And I couldn't do it. She was great."

"You're the best Mako driver I've seen."

She inclined her head "Thank you. I'm sorry I ruined your mood."

He hadn't let go of her arm for the exchange and he wasn't about to. He asked "What if sex makes you want to swear?"

"That's easy. I'll say your name instead. It's been a stand in for every single word I've wanted to say to you. It works. Your name… means a lot to me."

"That's it. If anybody asks, you started it. I was being a gentleman. I knew I was in trouble when you dragged your chair next to mine, but I couldn't escape."

"Started what?"

"This." His hand slid up her arm and under, then around her back, pulled her to him, off her chair, with him standing up and her finding her place against his body. This they knew well, this she was so good at doing and wanting. Her legs clung tight around his back and her arms went wide around his cowl. He licked down her throat, tasting her racing pulse, saying hoarsely "You make me crazy."

Her voice was weak and reedy with breathlessness "I… started out that way… crazy… but… I'm really hoping you can make me sane."

"Not tonight, my Limayeth."

"Maybe… by the end of the week?"

"You have… a lot of crazy… Cara. We're going to celebrate that before we try to make any changes. For now… meet my crazy. Make friends."

"I love you, Garrus."

The way she said it, his name did sound like everything. He was going to count every single one of his firsts. Their firsts. He was going to make her crazy. It didn't seem possible that she'd be as crazed as he was, but he'd try… and he truly did not care if she spent every moment of them touching in a Reverie haze. For now he preferred it, and if he wanted her to talk… he'd tell her what to say. "I love you, my Limayeth. Kiss me, Cara."

Her cool fingers were between his jaw and mandible, her mouth on his, and he kept an eye barely cracked open to make it to the bed that was fortunately near. He sat down and leaned back, bringing her with him, her mouth and fingers along his hide. He had a Turian pillow, his fringe protected over the back of that, his knees bent. She shifted to his lap, her knees down on either side of his waist, her trusting weight on his chest. He'd learned her and her hunger here, gratifying in the way she sought out the hide at the side of her throat with her lips, her fingertips trailing along the harder lines that defined him. He knew that she'd move from reverent tracing to warm exploration, and then her tongue on his, her nails would find a place on his plate where she could apply pressure and he could feel that along the skin underneath.

Best of all, she'd insist herself that his shirt came off, he usually only had to shift to help, watching her burnished red hair, his fingers twining between the strands, her lips and fingers along his chest. She'd want scent, and she'd get it. She'd want Reverie and she'd get it. And now she gave every sign of wanting him… and she would get him too.

This was not a woman sorry about her choices, her apprehension and anxiety gone. He was still going to wait for her to set her pace, and if that took hours… good.

Cara leaned up and on this seemingly new Garrus… who she'd only known for a few days, really. Someone who would work with her and not against her. Someone who would give her what she wanted and let her go do what she had to. Someone who smelled and tasted and felt so very good. She had gotten pretty good at Turian fashion, at least shirts. Her fingers found and released the catches slowly, and he cooperatively helped her take it off him. Finding out that she wouldn't be thrown on a virtual set of Turian porn expectations, camera ready, had been… very helpful.

She was on that hill of warm honey and she was going to roll her way to the bottom. She trusted him. Sitting on his lap like this she'd have to raise her thighs to reach his mouth and he would have to bend down to reach hers. She strained up to kiss him and he met her, a soft contented sigh of relief on her breath once his tongue touched hers. She had Reverie and courage and love… and a little fear and a little worry. She let the Reverie slowly replace the fear and the worry, courage seemed unnecessary, and love was augmented as always by a meandering flow of warm desire, realization that the boundaries were lifted and she could… as he phrased it… claim him as hers. He'd already claimed her… after his bond in his office he'd said he'd wait… and let her decide. That seemed to be what he was doing, slow paced and permissive. Reverie built to her moans and her nails finding places in his plate where they could dig in and hold.

He asked her "What does it feel like when you kiss me?"

Her stomach fluttered at the sound of his voice. She murmured "Your voice makes my stomach flutter."

"Is that a good thing?"

"That's a very good thing. When I kiss you it feels like I'm underwater, a new world, warm and suspended, no gravity, silence all around, and when you talk it blocks out any other sound I might ever want to hear."

"If I do anything you don't like, tell me right away, Cara. Reverie should make everything… feel good… but you have a tricky little mind…"

"Mmm… I do."

"You should stop thinking… and focus on feeling."

"Can I think that I love you?"

"Always. If it doesn't feel good… tell me. If it does… tell me. Okay?"

"Okay… that… feels good."

"What part of that?"

"Your voice, your chest under my hands, your mouth… Garrus… please."

"Anything you don't like so far?"

"Mmmm… no. Just my… tricky little mind."

"She won't last. She'll give up, get tired, go to sleep."

"You can shut off my mind. I shouldn't like it."

"Mmm… but you do?"

"Oh… yes."

"I want to look at you, Limayeth. I want to see your skin. I want to see your skin under my hands. Keep your eyes closed if that makes you nervous."

"I think I will."

"All right. If you get cold, you tell me, we'll make it warmer. I'll… make you warmer."

"Okay."

He'd only felt the curve of her spine under and through fabric, now he moved both hands slowly under her shirt and scratched down her back with talon tips dragged behind flat, warm palms. She tipped her head back and let out a long "ohhhh…"

He had no experience with the fastenings of her clothes so he retrieved her hands and put them on the clasps of the soft golden-brown patterned fabric of her fitted tunic. She moved her hands as though hypnotized, her expression not changing except for slight concentration through thick bliss. She kept her eyes closed; unsure what to do once the fastenings were released, the fabric hanging open. He scraped a talon of each hand through marking scent and drew it down along the revealed lines and curves of her skin. She breathed in, unselfconscious pleasure on her features and in her soft moan.

Here he wanted to stay awhile. He leaned her back against his knees, the fabric pooling around her breasts, his attention drawn to the odd… hole… on her stomach. Navel. Her skin looked even paler than her face and arms, near translucent and unbearably delicate. Her freckles were scattered farther apart where the sun had not touched her skin. He retracted his talons and moved a fingerpad around the outside of her navel.

She laughed.

She was very ticklish, he knew. She opened one eye and smiled at him, he made a note of it. That…was ticklish. He wondered what his tongue would feel like there, and he'd find out later. He moved his hands to the curve of her waist on either side, bone structure alarmingly obvious under the skin. Her ribs made a ladder his fingers could climb. Her head was tipped back on his knees as he smoothed more scent along her waist and then up, until his thumbs were under the slight swell of her breasts.

These… were as strange to him as he imagined his fringe was to her. His fringe was entirely impractical… and breasts were…

He shifted his thumb along soft skin that gave to the lightest pressure, to one of her nipples.

The moan… she let out… made some veil of restraint in him tear down. He gritted his teeth for a moment and tried to think… through the presence of that sound. He fought the urge to open his legs and let her fall back, shift his weight until she was flat on the bed, the fastest way there, and then…

And then her eyes would open in shock and he… would not be going slowly. It occurred to him he was going to experience his own series of shocks. He breathed deliberately as she opened one eye and said "Problem?"

"Opposite. That sound makes me want to head toward big shock right now." He moved both palms to cup her breasts, the hide low on his thumbs brushing simultaneously over both nipples, moving from soft to prouder raised skin that gave way still to his hands. His hands and her breasts were obscured by skimming fabric, but he saw her face with her eyes closed and heard a more ragged moan from her throat.

It was like holding…a remote control…to a woman. Humans had gone the opposite route from Turians in evolution, with humans as impractically soft and responsive as Turians were impractically hard and insensitive. He began to appreciate even more… why she was afraid of him. Invisible collar and breasts alone… a kiss… a stroke… and she was melted moans. Every defense she cultivated so carefully… gone to the power her own skin had over her… the power she'd given him. The power he'd taken.

He had to have her on her back, he wanted both hands, his mouth on her breasts and the angle here was impossible. If he lifted her by the thighs to bring her breasts closer he wouldn't have his hands. Again… don't shock the woman by dropping her suddenly and attacking her.

Attack… gently? Here's where Turians being impractically hard… with his resurgent need to tear… was not helping. He slid his hands along her back again, under the tunic, lifted her and shifted her against his chest again, his crest to her hair and her soft accepting sigh against his chest. He eased the fabric off her shoulders, down and away, talons down the delicate skin of her back... and his talons left pink trails down her skin.

He stopped and took a deep breath. He drew a second set of lines… just to be sure.

He was sure. He closed his eyes, opened his mouth, closed it again and then said "You… are so beautiful."

She asked as shyly as she could manage under Reverie "Yeah?"

"Yes, Limayeth."

"I'm glad you think so. You… are magnificent."

"Yeah?"

"Yes, Garrus."

His arms closed around her, he carefully rolled her onto her back, aware of the pressure of her breasts against his plate but not the texture of her skin. Her mouth came to his again, and he was happy in his timeless sense to kiss her until she was panting.

Here's where your promise of six hours bites you in the ass. You're not going to make it that far. Despite your promises you're prone to gratuitous violence and big explosions.

Hopefully not bad dialogue.

He kissed his way down from her mouth to her breasts, finding the lines of scent he'd drawn and getting those deliberately onto the plate of his face. His instinct was to test every texture with his teeth, but he didn't here, his tongue along one nipple, his hand holding her other breast, and she was arched up into his touch. She was expressive to the point of abandoned, loud, her hands at the back of his fringe, pressing in with her small fingertips in too many places to be real.

His pants were not well chosen, and no pair would have been without expansive tailoring…and he had to get them off, his plates spread to painful strain against tight fabric. He stripped the blankets on one side of the bed, shifted her over onto them so she would be covered and not cold when he stood. Turian tailoring was by necessity a pain in the ass and he was afraid if he chose to tear his own off, he'd do the same to hers, and he wanted… at all costs… to avoid association with and potential of… tearing.

She opened dazed eyes questioningly, and he said "I'm not leaving you. I have to take off clothes."

He expected her to maybe nod and close her eyes again, but her eyes followed him as though hypnotized, again. There was… no way to play this down, so to speak. He watched her as she watched him, his hands slow. Not strip tease but steady. This would not result in tease. Even for Turians, he was big. He'd seen some human porn with comparable males, but they were advertised as gargantuan. He'd seen comparable toys. They'd simultaneously given him hope and the urge to pray to whatever Spirits guarded sexual compatibility between species.

It might be a testament to the porn she'd watched, she did not run or look away. She did blush and he gave her a crooked smile. It might be a testament to choice and Reverie and love and her indiscriminate curiosity. She held the blankets open for him with a smile back. Surprise, his own small shock, affection and the need to return to her mouth had him sliding back in with her, between cool to warming sheets. He held his weight off her with one arm, a hand on her breast as he tasted the moans that affected him so much, possessive fire along his spine, ownership of every sound, each one a first and new. She smelled more sharply and sweetly of desire, the blankets trapping the scent.

Her body was arching into his, only her hips free to move without restraint. His hand left her breast, moved back down the ladder of her ribs, along the curve of her waist and then down along the swell of her ass, lifted her up to press against him. He was down along her body with his mouth to her breast, her hips against his abdomen. He shifted so one of her legs was trapped between his, cock pressed against the upper length of her thigh.

She… was not shy… or afraid anymore, and he had to shift up soon because the pressing of her thigh rhythmically to his was…

Screw six hours. He wasn't going to make it to 20 minutes.

His mouth followed the path of his hand, he licked the under curve of her breast, down along the textured rise and fall of her ribs, scraped his teeth along the inner curve of her waist, his hand tugging at her pants with her catching on and lifting up to assist.

Bless her helpful heart.

He couldn't see her. Some day he'd get her in a warm room…or he was going to turn the heat up here a bit higher… definitely… and see her more clearly. That was also the best way to get her full body flush. He wanted that mirror again.

…he wanted ANY mirror… or some light. He brushed fingers between her thighs, just to triangulate and she lurched off the bed, his hand pulled back suddenly but not quickly enough, he ended up with his finger veering off at a sharp vector, and she cried out. With Reverie it wouldn't be pain…not right now…but they shouldn't do that again. She'd likely have a Turian-finger-shaped bruise on her inner thigh soon.

She said softly "Sorry… that was my fault."

He kissed back up her body to her lips and then said "I'm going to turn up the heat later. Right now… Cara, I need to see or I'm going to be lost. Lost is bad. That was a bad sound."

"It was my fault. I was surprised."

"Let's go for less surprise and more 'mmmm' okay?"

"No blankets are okay."

"Think you can manage that full body blush thing?"

"I think I'm already doing that."

"Good girl." He kissed her lavishly to offset the teasing of those words, didn't stop until the tension was soaked out of her, until she was back to mindless moans.

Spirits, he loved those so much.

He shifted down her body, leaving more scent painted with careful fingertips, lines drawn with the very cautious scrape of a tooth. For Spirit's sake he could write his name on her. He was going to. Just… not right now. Maybe he'd write "Property of Garrus Fanning" in Turian script on her back while she was sleeping, to match the "Property of Lal Shepard" to any Turian who cared to look. Didn't matter if it disappeared in minutes, all that mattered is he had the opportunity to write it. He'd always wanted to learn how to paint. He'd transfer that to a passion for calligraphy on her skin.

He scraped his teeth along her hip, learning her sounds, the arch of her spine and requests for more… of everything… he'd asked her to tell him what felt good and she was obliging. The echo of 'good girl' in his head was juxtaposed with the image of Commander Shepard having the Citadel wrapped about her finger and it was just immature enough to be slightly embarrassing and really, really satisfying. He had to figure out how to get her literally wrapped around his finger… but human anatomy was… confusing. Open, vulnerable and prone to… her lurching. He couldn't ask her to show him. If he wanted a full body blush he'd get one, but she'd be mortified and maybe… she didn't know. No, asking her was not how he was going to go about this.

She was… blushing… all over, patches of color on her thighs, her eyes closed tight and just enough Reverie for her to not run screaming, but not enough for her to not be embarrassed, possibly fatally so under non-Reverie circumstances. He kissed along the insides of her thighs, straining thighs, realizing he was going to have to restrain her or she would lurch again. He pressed his shoulders in against her inner thighs, looped his arms under her upper thighs, holding her down, moving to explore her with tongue and not fingers… not yet. She couldn't injure herself with a lurch against his tongue. He didn't imagine her thighs could spread much wider, tense and trembling. Turian hips… did not do that… or move that way.

He touched his tongue to her clit, she behaved as though she had been electrocuted, but the sound she made was not pain. He had tried to at least do some specific research here, feather light tongue strokes, hardly any pressure, until she was whimpering, sounding desperately anxious, mewling with his name between the music. He stroked lower with a careful finger, finding a spot that gave slightly, but everything about her was give. She was slick-thick-wet, he shifted his tongue down until he was sure his tongue could press inside, finding that spot with his finger and moving his tongue back up to her clit. She was near bucking-begging, with his shoulders holding her open, his tongue finding a pace to match her accelerating whimpers, his finger able to twist very gently inside, tight enough to feel like she was trying to throw him off, push him out.

He had a moment's existential horror that he would never be able to join, she was cutting off circulation to his finger. Then he imagined that sensation gripping his cock and it suddenly felt like she was pulling his finger in deeper, incongruously strong rhythmic clenching around his finger, which was able to glide in and out covered in slick wet, suddenly now more her scent than any he'd associated with her. Her thighs were trembling but restrained, his shoulders shoved to hold her open, focused on every reaction from the light pass of his tongue and the slow twist of his finger, and here he owned her. He had just enough restraint to remember not to hurt her, more reminded by the texture of softness making up his new law.

He'd meant to have her claim him but holding her down and her own ignorance made that impossible, intent overwhelmed by the scent of her and the bucking of her helpless hips. She attempted to arch again, but she could only do that with the rest of her body, thrashing with a low, ragged scream, setting off harder tightening around his finger, a wet rush he felt surge along his finger and onto his hand. Snarling and fevered he pulled back to watch her come, his… big… shock… watched her writhe and strain and heard her scream.

He bit the inside of her trembling thigh, setting her off again, a burst of aftershock, high keening moans and panting. He licked at her blood, licked at the rush of wet heat, tasting helplessness and seeing that he would never have to ask her to open to him or open for him, that was done. She was done. She was his. Not just prey scent, prey self, bone deep and in her blood, in her nature, set to the opposite of his. She would never meet him halfway. He had to close the distance, thrilled to do it in the galloping haze of losing his mind and gaining instincts.

She would take him. She had… to take him. She was his bond mate. He lurched forward, hooking the thigh he had not bitten with his elbow under her bent knee, holding her open, his other hand guiding his cock to find that slick-hot spot in her that seemed to pull him inside from her still-clenching shock.

He bit down on his tongue, blood mingling and entry gained by pressing her open by fractions of inches, pulling back and pressing again, mindless screams of not pain from her. She was vibrating, thrashing pleasure made of delicate flesh and moans. Reverie was as unnaturally slick and hot as whatever she was made of, as fucking impossible to resist as it had been when he'd had her against that door. His. Absolutely his, every single inch of this woman, inside and out, real and imagined. Fucking his.

He should have done this then, held her by that invisible leash and driven his body into hers so she would fucking know every moment that she… belonged… to him. He scented fresh blood, different from what he'd drawn on her thigh. It should have made him stop, but that thought flashed and was gone. There was no way he would. That alarm against the look on her face and the heave of her body was insignificant, unimportant, drowned out by her head thrown back and her breasts moving every time they strained against each other to get closer. Her body was as giving, welcoming, resisting and restrictive as she was, and she was built by some God as worthy of worship as she was. She was built to take him. She tore Reverie from him in dizzying sheets, hard and fast doses with every inch gained and reclaimed inside her. Her hips, when he let her move on her own, lunged up as he pressed forward until he was hilted in her. The drive of his hips transmuted into a lean, down into a snarl against her throat, teeth bared, his tongue pressing in on her pulse, her foot hooked over his shoulder, with him pressing in as hard as he could while she gave. No fucking boundaries, as promised and delivered. No metal. His.

While he was on the subject of Gods, he was one when he was inside her.

Limayeth was fallen, he was conquered and would never leave her. He would never, ever fucking let her out of his arms, and he had to.

Cara had fainted, the symbolic and the real, imaginary and potential, limp while her scream still echoed in his ears and his growl built to a roar in his throat.

He panted in dazed aftermath until he realized he was going to pass out too. He shouldn't crush her. He straightened her limbs, gathered her up, stayed joined, shifted to his back with her against his chest, his knees bent, his head back against the pillow when his vision began to blur. He could tell by the scent of her blood that she wasn't injured, mixed in with everything else overwhelming, the scent fading and not strengthening as it would with an active bleed. He pulled blankets up haphazardly around them, his limbs losing their strength. He ran his fingers through her sweat-damp hair, thanked her for her claiming, which was a courtesy and a lie and a truth, their significance sliding away as the fog closed in. He felt a fleeting half hope that they wouldn't wake up so he wouldn't have to contemplate letting her go. So he still had some maudlin left, at least it was about dying happy even if it was about dying soon. Dying delirious. He had a flash of feeling the weakest and the strongest he had ever felt in his life, and wondered if that's what she felt every moment of every day, if this was her gift, the essence of Cara.

Every day. Spirits willing, he would be there with her.


	29. Chapter 29

Garrus roused himself slowly, the sensation of being asleep not fully resolving because he didn't pass into fully alert. Reverie was slick warm through him, close to an unquestioning dream state of its own. Trance. Trance with her as his focus, the measure of her breath and heartbeat. She was still. He shifted her head so he could look at her face. She was beautiful in her sleep.

He checked the time. He had been out for nearly four hours, the maximum he ever slept.

To say he felt ecstatic would be an understatement. Bonding chemistry being powerful with her was an understatement. He had no idea how this worked, he didn't know if he was the first Turian to bond with a human.

Happy to be a pioneer.

He felt vaguely alarmed that he'd…

Rammed his way into his bond mate.

Passed out.

Might have torn her throat out.

Might have passed out on her.

Might have let her bleed to death.

Might have let her bleed to death on him.

Wanted to stay passed out forever.

He should be… much more alarmed… at all of those… but his fears slid away with no traction. He embraced with no small amount of smugness his earned Turian destiny. He had never felt this alive or this whole.

He blinked, lost his train of thought for a time except to watch her face and then wanted to see her eyes, wondered… if she was going to wake up…? If she was as super saturated with Reverie as he was… and it was stronger than he'd ever experienced, what was going on with her tiny heart and tricky brain and… and would she wake up? If he stayed joined… would she bliss her way to death?

That should not be a comforting thought, just staying here until they both starved to death, unable to feel hunger, but it was, and he laughed. He nuzzled her hair, closed his arms around her and promised himself he'd wake her in four hours.

Whenever that was.

He lost himself to the circulating sensation of perfection, destiny and bliss set to the patterns of her heart and breath.

He wrote his name… carefully… on her back with the tips of his talons.

Beautiful. Pink lines that faded to nothing in minutes. Either way, writing or skin… perfectly beautiful, her freckles looked like close constellations he could name and chart. He drew lines between them and watched them fade completely.

He talked to her, told her words dammed up and fearful that were now shaken loose and obsolete, thorns pulled out of his heart, the words flowing like blood and the act of speaking making his heart whole.

He regained some more of his mind around hour six, grateful at least that there seemed to be a leveling off point and that he might… be able to move her… just not yet. He wasn't worried about her and it wasn't insanity, she was breathing deeply, heart strong, and he really did have time, she wasn't in danger. She smelled like bliss, her bliss, no fear or pain or nightmare. He just… didn't want to move her because she was perfect and peaceful and he was home.

It did take a little longer than eight hours, but not by much, maybe an extra half an hour, bracing himself by the eight hour point, trying to move her. His strength wasn't gone, he was just… unwilling. It wasn't frightening and he didn't worry he couldn't… because he was sure he could. He had a few false starts that resulted in him holding her closer and murmuring apologies for considering it into her hair. When he did manage to lift her off with a mournful groan and feeling as though this would kill him, he pulled her back against his chest with apologies for separation.

Fuck, he felt wrong and vicious, as though he'd torn out her throat with his teeth and left her to bleed to death in the cold. Thinking about biting, he carefully moved her so she was on her back on the bed, apologized for the somnophilia and checked her thigh, his bite mark shallow, no fresh blood, no abrasions. Thank fucking Spirits no… tears…

A quick check on his Omni Tool and he confirmed that the likely blood source was due to her virginity, which seemed a ridiculously stupid thing for evolution to do to a woman. Chalk it up to a species that gave birth the way they did and couldn't take a talon… anywhere… without losing something vital.

He apologized again, swabbed a finger with Medigel and cursed viciously when the sensation of his finger inside her body made him desperately want back in. Now.

He couldn't bring himself to do anything about the bite mark, and was going to ask her to let him keep it. Them. There. Where he could see.

There were…so many things wrong with him right now. Too many things incongruously right, all leading back to her.

He willed his plates to close, stood up to pace across the room a few times before he tried looking at her or touching her again because he was going to decide that sixteen hours was fine otherwise.

He tried to reason against the internal urging that it was only eight more hours and he should not have abandoned her like that. He had time. They were only on their first day here. He had to work out…alarms. He needed to be properly afraid. Fuck, would this happen every damned time they joined?

He remembered to turn the heat up. Her skin felt cold. It always did, she was naturally colder than he was, but the instinct was to warm her up. Not… with your body. Definitely not with your tongue.

He stepped back, turned away, struggled with plates again. Reverie overdrive was fading and he was feeling the itching stress of a headache building. Withdrawal. That fast. Minutes. The urge to be with her had a sharper, stinging edge that wasn't as warm and blissful.

He had thought of bringing food and first aid supplies thankfully. He had counted on a few bruises and scratches and obviously a few puncture wounds. He had planned on keeping his talons retracted, which he had managed, but he had medication for pain, not high-grade addiction withdrawal. This did not seem the sort of thing medication could fix. Dextro remedies were different from hers, so he wouldn't cut into her supply by taking some himself. He grabbed a bite of food, which tasted awful and induced nausea because it wasn't food he was craving and popped two tablets, hoping they'd help clear his head. If it worked on his pain hopefully it would work on hers. He was not entirely sure she was supposed to bend…that way. Those ways. She would be in some pain.

He could take a shower but he wouldn't leave her alone for a minute by inclination and because he told himself he needed to continue to check her breathing.

So he'd carry her with him. He very carefully did not touch her skin, swathed her in a blanket and tried not to breathe her direct scent in, averting eyes and nose, not bothering with clothes himself. He didn't want any clothes. He didn't want to put her down once she was lifted in his arms. His headache and nausea eased slightly, he didn't think from the medication, but from proximity to his addiction. Once he began breathing her in he didn't consider stopping again.

He wasn't going to wake her, wasn't going to scare her, was going to figure this out… before she opened her eyes… on her own… and hopefully what she'd have to say was in the order of "Wheee!" and not a different kind of scream.

He did manage a few more bites of food, some water, a moment in the bathroom, talking to her and alternately apologizing and promising… what?

'Hope I didn't terrify you while you were too drugged to stop me.'

Bad idea. Leading the witness.

Would he have stopped?

Don't… look too closely at that just yet. Verify that she didn't want him to stop… or work out… fuck… hand signals, tapping out, safe words or safe…whimpers. He considered every sound she'd made, and that was not helping. They all sounded… worthy of repetition.

He couldn't tell if he was overreacting. He hadn't hurt her. He really hadn't. He'd been careful and no teeth except in one deliberate and controlled place, no talons, he hadn't… carved up her back for the fun of seeing his name.

Oh Spirits. He tried to measure his closeness to that outcome and fortunately the idea did bring horror, not bliss or 'let's try that next!'

Maybe he was just willing himself awake, willing her awake, and that's what he should be doing, against the flow of bond that was threatening his caution. He still had caution. He had been cautious.

Just not as cautious as he'd like.

He heard Russ's voice in his head with his dry delivery, explaining how Liara and he had conspired to bring Shepard back without telling him. 'We thought you might… overreact…'

He checked and rechecked, playing moments of them together over in his mind because they were the source of delirium and potential perspective and the closest thing he had to touching her again. He did know her. He knew her pleasure sounds, knew what was ticklish or too sensitive… everything about her was sensitive. He knew what her hands felt like when she wanted him, what tight muscles or a stiff neck meant if she was anxious. She had wanted him. She hadn't tried to push him away. She had dug her nails into the hide at his waist and she knew… she knew how much he liked that.

He laughed. "Liked." If anybody… ANYBODY… was overreacting here… it was Cara. Making sounds like that. Staying out for nine hours.

Grabbing at him like that. She was surprisingly strong for such a little thing. She clearly had her own instincts.

She started it.

She had claimed him. His name had sounded like every word from her lips. Every good word.

Spirits, he wanted more friendly lunging in his life. Right now.

He also wanted to promise sanity, hoped to deliver.

He shouldn't overreact further. She wasn't at real risk. The moment meant… everything to him and he had to wait until she could validate it for him, smile at him, kiss him again.

Of course everything led to her kissing him again.

He was being anxious and restrained. Appropriate. That's all. He was anxious about her sleeping too long because he wanted to see her eyes and he wanted…

Okay, he wasn't just being restrained. He was… restrained though. He could do it.

She needed to eat, she needed to drink. He needed to ask her if she needed or wanted a shower. He needed to make sure her pupils weren't blown and she knew her own name. But her first experience after sex should not be him holding her eye open and demanding to know the date.

…please know my name, and not attached to a curse.

She didn't curse.

Wait… she said she'd just use his name. He laughed. That wasn't that funny. Okay, it kinda was.

No moon on Intai'sei, but bright stars. He managed to gather a piece of cheesecake, milk, water, analgesic tabs, set them up in easy reach of his contemplation chair and sat down to contemplate.

Holy… fucking… maybe he needed to rent out a room on Huerta, just book a suite where they could be set up with IVs.

No, that does not sound good, a continuous Reverie coma.

Yes. Yes, it really does.

He held her in his arms, her head up on his chest, fussing about the right angle and would she be comfortable if she were awake. He pulled her outside arm from the blanket, put one of his hands on her bare shoulder, palm tingling from the desired contact and held her hand held loosely in his so his fingertips were on the reassuringly strong and not too fast pulse point at her wrist. Contact with her skin and her scent rising warm and his headache faded… though he tried to hold onto it for sanity's sake, considering it better than deciding on the sixteen hour mark.

He had heard nothing about potential Reverie overdose among Turians, but he believed he was an index case… and she was… tiny. She induced Reverie in him at ramped-up rates. He hoped she hadn't absorbed as much intended for a female Turian approximately three times her size and much more… robust… in terms of adaptation.

He told himself 'Don't fuck this up Vakarian…Shepard…Fanning.' Then he smiled because he was, despite the deserved panic, really, really happy and proud…

Ecstatic.

She took mercy on him at about nine hours and fifteen minutes, with his crest touching her hair, breathing her in, stars in the sky and constellations on her arm, pulse reassuring on his fingertips.

Cara woke up… it took her a moment, but once she knew where she was, remembered it was where she was supposed to be… a flood of memory and then gratitude that she'd be able to spend more time here with him. Her fingers tightened on his hand and he squeezed back. She said softly with a hoarse crackle "Hey."

He sounded anxious, worried "Hey. You okay?"

She had a little headache, and she was… sore… but so overwhelmingly happy about those things as well earned that she didn't want to mention them. "I'm… I'm the best I've ever been. How about you?" To her it had been seconds ago, but they were somewhere else now, he was worried and that made her worried.

With an outrush of breath from him he said "If you are… then I am."

She bit her lip and then said "Can I say something terrible?"

He didn't hesitate "Of course. Tell me." Serious.

She whispered "We should have done that sooner. Much sooner. I'm sorry I asked you to wait. That was dumb. But you seem aware that I'm dumb. Please… forgive me." Maybe she should have run away with him at high speeds and never looked back.

"Forgive you?" He sounded shocked.

"Can't do it?" Teasing… hopeful… worried.

"What? No. NO. I mean yes. Wait. I… can't really imagine being happier, so… though I want to argue for so many reasons about the premise of forgiving you for anything, yes, you're forgiven. Can I be forgiven for thinking maybe I just killed you?"

"I'm not dead. Done."

"So glad."

"A little… sore…"

"I will carry you. And…" He lifted the cheesecake "I come prepared. I… uh, used some Medigel, but eat some and then I'll give you some pain pills."

"I think I'm okay. Nothing kissing you won't fix."

"You were under for nine hours, Cara, eat something."

"Really?"

"Nine hours and fifteen minutes."

"Joined… that whole time?" She didn't have words for how he made her feel, even though she'd missed those hours, she had never felt better. And sex…she liked sex. A lot. She was sold. She was in. Okay, so she'd gotten a bunch of ideas about human sex from romance novels and vids and had stomach flutters and sighs… and then Turian-human sex had scared the hell out of her. But THIS… was something she hadn't read about, hadn't seen, hadn't imagined. She knew… she had been afraid of that… and she knew why… and even knew it would be painful to leave. But they would, because that was the now they'd built. She'd do it, because it was her job. But she was never, ever going to waste another moment with him. Now she understood why he'd pushed so hard, and finally comprehended what it had cost him moment to moment, imagining this… imagining going without this… who they could be together. Who they were together.

His hands came to urge her to lift the fork because she made no move to do it herself "Joined eight and a half… I couldn't… um… leave. Going to have to do something about that."

"I don't see the problem. We've got… a week, right? Cheesecake every 10 hours and I'm good to go. Make it a slice and a half just to be safe."

"I love you… so much."

"Good. I've got time to make up for." She dug into cheesecake and he started to tremble. She put her fork down and said "You're not okay."

"I'm… delirious."

"Bad delirious?"

"No. Yes. Fuck. I mean… eat. I'll talk. Just eat."

She looked at him but took a careful fork full and then said "Was I… was it… was that not okay?" It didn't seem possible… but she was dumb, it had just been proven.

He growled in frustration and said "Eat!"

She put the fork in her mouth, chewed mechanically.

He started to laugh and said "Delirious covers it. Don't you dare… think that the word 'okay' could be used to describe our joining, your claiming."

"What's a better word?" Still worried.

"Delirious. Not in a bad way. A very good way. An ecstatic way." He gestured to her fork.

She took another bite and said "It doesn't taste as good as it did before."

"I still need you to finish, please. And take these." He held out his hand with the analgesic tablets and she dutifully took them and swallowed them with a bit of a grimace.

He asked "Sore throat?"

She shrugged and said softly "Did some screaming." She sounded… and felt… just a little bit smug. A lot smug. She couldn't suppress her smile and looked at him through her lowered lashes.

"What's the best way to describe that?" He was still worried.

"Awesome." She started to giggle, then snorted, then giggled harder.

He laughed, felt some of his anxiety melt and then said "Sorry… I'm crazy… and worried that your opinion is all Reverie… and I don't think I can wait for you to… dry out… before I kiss you again. And after I kiss you again I'm guessing it's another eight hours before I get to talk to you. So eat. I am trying to avoid killing you."

She smiled and ate, shrugged and said "If you do… I'm okay with it."

"I'm not." His hand came to the back of her neck, and she leaned into the caress.

"Why doesn't this taste as good?" She smashed down the last bite with her fork before he scraped it up and put it in her mouth.

"I think… because Reverie is insisting we are not hungry because Reverie is busy reinforcing itself, wanting to do delirious ecstatic things again."

"Smart Reverie."

"Mmmm. Maybe. I did get vaguely sane around hour six, but I worried a lot. Maybe too much. Maybe not enough."

"I'm really okay. Better than okay. I'm stuck between being smug I waited because here is perfect and you are perfect… and being angry I insisted on waiting because I'm sure anywhere you are would be perfect."

"I promise you, Cara… if you wanted any… autonomy… it's good you have a Drell bodyguard and some principles, because if I had done that your first day back… you'd still be a missing person."

"Happily… missing person. A four billion credit sex toy." She sounded wistful, suddenly missed that alternate timeline, months into giving up all other pleasures and trials but him. Worth it.

"I should be offended, but I can't be. That… should not sound so… deliriously ecstatic. Not that you're not worth every fucking credit and more."

"No, it shouldn't sound good, but it does. There, I ate. The way I see it we have a real problem. Just not necessarily until the end of the week if we're careful. We set alarms… to eat… and we apply… teamwork. We can do it. I swear we can be just like responsible adults and eat. I solemnly promise that I intend to wake up. Did you try to wake me up?"

"No. I let you sleep until you woke on your own."

"Okay, then you probably could have woken me up. If you need to wake me up because you're worried, don't worry, wake me up."

"You are so inspiring."

"I have to do something terrible though."

"What?"

"Stand up. Go to the bathroom."

"Fuck."

"Yeah."

"I'll carry you."

She shook her head solemnly "I need to prove I can be a responsible adult or the next time you're going to worry that I can't walk."

"Maybe I'll make sure you can't walk. I'd rather carry you."

"Yeah. Me too. But… let me be inspiring." She tried to get up with as much dignity as she could wrapped in a blanket, which wasn't much. He impeded her, hands seemingly supporting her but keeping her from regaining her awkward attempts at balance. She stopped trying, realizing how very sore and aching she was, happily overjoyed about it. She laughed and said "Garrus."

"Mmmm?"

"Let go of my arm."

"I don't like this plan."

"We don't have to like it. We just have to do it."

He growled and she loved that sound, leaned in to kiss him and got lost. Then she remembered. Right. She took her arms from around his shoulders and said "I will be… right back. I promise."

He growled again.

"Garrus?"

"Mmmm?"

"Let go… of the blanket."

"You're mean. Do you know that?"

"I do. And I'm sorry."

"Come back and prove it."

"That I'm mean or that I'm sorry?"

"Both."

"Yes, sir."

"Oh, you're proving that too."

She laughed, and he let go, and she hurried. She upgraded 'kind of sore' to 'I did not know I had places that I now know I have places' sore. This was through Reverie and medication… and she was ready and willing and motivated to get back out there and earn more soreness and hopefully some really good muscle strain. She had… bite marks on her inner thigh. She could go for more of those too.

Garrus sat, panting and trembling, remembering that he was a seasoned soldier and a decent politician and he could do this. But he had never been a drug addict. He had never been this hard in love. He had never been this scared of a potentially disastrous close call and the looming challenge of separation.

Catastrophic success, that's what this was called in strategic parlance. A goal achieved in such a way that it creates an entirely new set of potentially more virulent problems than the one originally solved. Like wondering if he would seriously consider… or not even consider… just act out on the impulse to tie her to the bed and keep her there, Reverie making the idea that Krios was coming to kill him seem just fine and worth it, not a real problem.

Wondering about her handing him the rope and begging him to do it with a look through her lashes.

See, now that just sounded good all around, except for the Krios part coming to kill him, because he'd do it, and then Cara would be conveniently already tied to a bed.

Cara looked at herself in the mirror, wondering if she'd see a new person. No. She looked the same.

She did not feel the same. Yes, headache and body ache and… and worry. Worry about the end of the week.

She needed strength.

That set off a ripple in her mind, shadowed and shifting mosaic, like a fin breeching the surface at a distance in the fog briefly only, then gone. Trick of the mind or trick of the heart or trick of the light or trick of the dark.

'If you need strength, you come to me for it.'

She closed her eyes, chasing that as it slipped away, trying to remember or locate an origin…

It felt like Thane, but he had never said that? Had he? Everything was blurry. Regardless of where that came from, it sounded like him. The intent and potential lesson of those words soaked in like watercolor wash that did not recall the pass of the brush and as far as the piece was aware, had always been there. The nature of her mind was cultured to be like the nature of paper, soaking in content without awareness, judgment or rejection.

Her prior thought came back sharp in ownership '…knew it would be painful to leave… but they would, because that was the now they'd built… she'd do it, because it was her job.'

She had a moment of trying to redefine the word 'we' and then that slipped away from 'this was the now Thane built' to her… and Garrus… and the strength that she needed.

Her fingertips slipped to her thigh, to the marks left by her bond mate. They were sore and tender… she dug her fingernails into them, sucked in a deep breath, closed her eyes and remembered Garrus's eyes, Garrus's body deep inside hers, with her wanting more of him until she took one last full aching breath, let it out on a scream and pitched into blissful dark where she was not alone. Where she was loved and was able to love in return. Where she heard whispers.

If there were shadows and fins and mosaics in her mind they were there for contrast, made the picture sharper, gave her more depth and a more critical eye, made her separation at the end of the week a sharp conclusion and something she could see and knew she could do. She would have the strength. She was strong.

She'd have Garrus, and she'd have that strength, and it was all hers… and she wanted it… him… them… with all the passion of someone who had dreamed of perfect love and had found it, built it with cooperative hands, and would never let it go. To hold onto something else she needed another pair of hands… and that seemed normal, fitting and miraculous, even if the hands did not resemble hers and her mind slipped away from identifying them as Drell and slick with venom.

She needed them. They were glowing. They were terrifying and could kill a lot of people, and she needed them… him… and bite marks on her thigh, and whispers in the dark.


	30. Chapter 30

Cara streamed back into Garrus's arms as though falling through warm honey with nothing to stop her but him. The blanket was clutched in a tight grip with one hand between her breasts, her eyes meeting his. He must have been staring at the door because his eyes were so easy to find and it was so easy to see that he wanted to see her. She had her headache and heartache and he had his, but that was only one more shared experience and they wanted more of those, more places to connect. She launched herself at him, knowing he'd catch her.

The blanket fell away and slid to her hips, her hands on his face and his hands on her back, her mouth finding his. She had been right and wrong; he took her intelligence away, but also so much of her shyness and uncertainty. So many things that had weighed her down and dragged her under were released by his arms closing around her, his body so solid under hers and his eyes so sure. So many things that had been theoretically wrong were proven right and true. It was an inalienable right to be loved this much, to love back with all the rush of glow and gravity.

Garrus had every moment of the dreams of the last several years of his life validated by her smile, his doubts dismissed by her return, by her need to be back in his arms. Faith like steady pressure rose and built into a new atmosphere he could breathe deeply, an atmosphere that did not escape through cracks and fissures of doubt and worry. This was sealed and sure, standalone faith, there because she was in his arms and had proven what he felt was true had been true, would be true. It transmuted grasping to holding, stuttering force into steady control, billowing and strong. They built Reverie back into the sustaining flow it gave them when they kissed, headache and body aches soothed and forgotten.

He wanted every word and no word, everything at once, all the freedoms he could count, all the firsts crowding in, but his hands on her hips and his tongue exploring her smile slowed down the bottleneck of flooding possibilities into what would perfectly fit each moment with time to savor each possibility.

Something that he'd cultivated while she was gone, which he'd paradoxically lost and gained because of her came flooding back. Patience. She would go his way. He wanted to celebrate patience. He wanted to celebrate having time and being able to see her eyes and hear her voice, celebrate that she'd be asleep in his arms again and he could enjoy every moment.

He'd tried to define her as his standard, and that was true, but the contrast between them was a constant wonder and miracle that he could not get used to no matter how much he tried. He gave up on normalizing her influence on him. He lost his balance, his expectations always defied with Reverie and her skin. He murmured "You're a myth in my mind and when I touch you… you are so small… and I say 'young lady' and 'good girl' alongside Limayeth and Commander and… I don't think I can get used to you, Cara. I don't want to get used to you. Do you get used to me or am I big and hard every time?"

She laughed and said "Small and soft are not… usually admired in Turian… oh…"

He nipped at her throat "Answer the question young lady."

She tilted her head back and said "Big… and hard… every time."

"Are you just saying that because you can't think?"

"Maybe. But it sounds true."

"And if I say it… that you're small… and soft… and I love that… can you hear it in a voice that means you're admired and not the alternative?"

"Garrus… I think you can call me a filing cabinet. Though I'm probably not tall enough to qualify. I'm also not getting any taller."

"I've noticed, and I've discovered new frontiers in neck strain."

"So my life's going to be endless short jokes?" It sounded lovely, shared intimacies and understanding.

"Oh no, not jokes. Okay, some jokes. I don't think I can help it. I'm going to be calling you so many names for tiny things with lots of… superlatives about soft appreciation. Maybe even verging on fetish. I'm apologizing in advance, I don't want to belittle you… but you are so little. So very little. Spirits, and I love seeing you blush, and you can't fight back… and I can't stand it, I have to say something, do something about it."

"I'm not getting any taller… and I'm not running away."

"Oh… running away… yeah, don't try that again. That first time… I nearly attacked you on the conference table. Whenever I look at that table now, I mourn my lost opportunity. Will you come with me back to my office, Cara, and let me hold you down on that table?"

"Let you? No… but now I know to never go to your office again."

He huffed against her throat "Tell me yes, please, right now. Someday, Cara. Maybe even the door. You said you couldn't be like me, can't be casual, but you… don't have to be like me. Let me be like me. You be like you. You… don't have to do a thing but moan. Or… or how about… I know. Official tour. CIC. Galaxy map."

She flushed and her head tilted back, dizzy. She didn't, couldn't argue but also couldn't agree and couldn't say why, modesty and intimacy crowding in on her. Thrilled that he wanted her, horrified to imagine it, but she did. Her tongue and brain didn't work, but her skin and blood conspired as always into hard flush.

He laughed and licked a long line up her throat, hands curved down and around to cup her ass, saying "Your skin is so beautiful… you look and taste so good when you blush, Cara. I love that you can do that. I love that I can make you do that. I want to apologize for that also, but I know I'm going to. I hope you never get used to me, I hope you like paying attention. I promise I won't ask you to do anything that you don't want to do… and never in front of anybody else… but oh yes, I am going to ask you to think about it. See, I just promised I won't ask you to do something you won't want to do… but that's a lie. I know it. I can promise to not… force you… but Spirits I'm afraid that's a lie too."

"You're…persuasive." Her eyes were closed, head tipped back and spine melted, his arms the only thing keeping her upright.

He kissed a line along her collarbones from one side to the other and to her other ear "So… you told me what my voice felt like, and what my hands feel like… what does it feel like when you come with my tongue on your beautiful… small… soft… body?"

A deeper crimson sped through capillaries and her skin was prickled hot, his mouth on her shoulders and neck, his hands supporting and caressing her tingling back. She tried to think through his deliberate attempt to make her faint from words and images alone. But she wanted him to know, so she said softly "Like I'm a solid, and then a liquid, and then a gas."

"I love it when you talk science, Cara. Explain it to me."

"W-well…it's about the application of…of heat."

"That's me, right?"

"Yes, that's you."

"Good."

"Don't make me say it."

"I'm just asking a question."

"You're making me crazy."

"You started out that way."

"Oh… right."

"Okay then, maybe you've explained it all nonverbally. I told you all you had to do was moan and you had that covered. That and the screaming."

She laughed nervously, relieved, dizzy, anticipating the next pass of his mouth on her collarbones and his hands along her spine and he obliged.

Then he asked "So are you going to try that out on your own now? We should have had sex before, you decided. Change your mind about anything else? Are you going to touch yourself now when I'm gone? Or with me watching… you on a conference table for instance?"

"What? No!" Her head jerked up and his hands moved to steady her while he made sure she didn't stab herself with his mandibles.

"Easy, Cara."

"Don't say things like that then."

"Humans do it all the time I've been led to believe."

"…not me."

"Why? Didn't you like…being a gas? Bubbling and flash points?"

"…yes."

"But not alone?"

"…no."

"So…why?"

"I told you."

"Tell me again. I thought new information might change things."

She shook her head briefly and said "It would be… lonely."

"We've got some lonely times ahead, Limayeth. What about when I call you? I can listen to you come if you help me out with that."

"…NO."

"Really? Even if I ask… really nicely? Why?"

"Because… because you can't… you'd still be alone, you can't feel it. It wouldn't be fair, and I… I want to need you. You wanted to be a need. Now you're a need. Why are you arguing with me about this? This is… I don't…"

"…it wouldn't be… fair? Spirits, Cara, you are the strangest… little… neck straining person… and you have to make things difficult… and wonderful."

"And expensive."

"Was that… a joke?"

"Maybe."

"You are… so beautiful. I am graced by your bond and you make me want to be a better man."

"And I… love you so much."

"Mmm… just not enough for the galaxy map."

"That…will never happen. I might have to change my running away stance. You have to work on that better man thing."

"Later."

She laughed and he shifted her back along his thighs until he could lean down and touch his mouth to her breast, one hand at her back angling her hips into his, open plates rubbing at the skin of her thighs. Her head was tipped back and her eyes closed. He found her hand with his and guided her to his cock, her fingertips gingerly careful, curious and tentative. He lifted his eyes to look at her face, determined concentration in her expression, her teeth worrying at her lower lip. She was painted with his scent, thick blush and outrage with the soundtrack of assertion of absolute abstinence unless he was touching her. Now her expression was studious with her attempt to touch him, learn him because he asked, her eyes clamped tightly closed, the blend of inexperienced and tentative somehow one of the most counterintuitive but strongest turn-ons he'd had the pleasure of feeling; different fuel, different flame, different flash point.

He focused on getting those moans from her, his mouth and hand on her breasts. Her hand was barely on his cock, paced to gentle and… studious… not teasing or demanding. Everything she felt from the way he touched her translated into her hand on him. If she gasped she squeezed, if he let up on pressure she'd rise up against his mouth and his fingertips and she'd lose her place, cool flat palm and little pads of fingertips.

He lifted his knees to support her back, one hand shifting to her mouth, his thumb along her lips. She looked blissful at the stroke of his hand and she made no move to take his thumb into her mouth or use her tongue, just the pleasure of his caress clear on her flushed face. He shifted her back, covered her hand that was on his cock with his own and moved until his cock was fully extended and pulled down, twisting against her palm and pressed between her thighs, wet hot glide against her clit. She… wasn't going to look… but he was. He watched her tense and embarrassed face, but her discomfort melted from solid to liquid, and her thighs tensed and pulled up, then relaxed back with a soft moan of surrender.

He guided her hand, but she also moved on her own, his cock twisting and seeking her, that patch of wet heat against him causing Reverie to start pumping into them in a tease that lit them both up like blush on her skin.

Of all the words of small things that occurred to him, the virce came most to mind, an exquisitely small and beautiful creature, mammalian, fleeter and more clever than most of the more lumbering life on Palaven of plate and claw. Hale had brought them to mind, but the virce were lower to the ground, six legs, more angular than rounded, sculpted fur and… unlike the human domesticated cat, venomous and poisonous. The comparison suited Cara well, and the name inside his head had grown in significance but he hadn't wanted to explain that she was named after one of the greater scourges to Turian hopes of domesticating something beautiful or being able to live in relative harmony. There were only a few relics that contained virce hide…but the animal got its revenge there, the poison that made them inedible extending through the hide and fur. Touching it, crafting it, wearing it… would result in exposed hide… eroding away very slowly, leaving lesions that scarred over and reopened unpredictably. Virce were unable to be kept as pets or domesticated. Draw their fangs and venom and still their fur had envenomed micro barbs in them comparable to nettles. Beautiful but unpredictable and… ornery. If there was a colony around any domesticated animals, livestock would often attempt to hunt the virce and if they caught one or more likely were bitten and then evaded, livestock would die. So they had been driven out and hunted…where they could be, and often they just had to be lived with and fences specialized to keep them from jumping over or tunneling under. Yet still in the Turian soul remained the desire to have one that would not bite or would not be as stubbornly resistant to every attempt to domesticate or train them.

A historically unconquered aspect of Palaven in a tiny, deadly, infuriating shape. She was a virce and he loved her, part of him frustrated beyond belief at her recalcitrance and part of him knowing exactly how difficult it was historically or even mythically to have one as a companion. Inescapable in the admiration of inherent beauty and grace was the under-the-breath curse of 'stubborn as a virce burrow.'

Seeing a virce was a bad omen… but every Turian child wanted one. Most Turian adults as well, even after having to take all the practical precautions to protect themselves from the animal's insidious advance into food stores.

He was just about ready to speak her true name in huffs against her skin, in her ear, with her hand spread under his and around, moans and writhing. She would welcome his cock when he pressed inside, welcome his finger inside her mouth, small teeth and soft hair, fleet and ornery, but not with him, not when she was abandoned like this, eyes closed and telling him that he was persuasive.

She still would be virce in nature, would not be domesticated, would require extra work, be venomous and poisonous despite her desire to stay. She would turn and bite and dart back to her warren. Not alone, joining the snake that could navigate those tunnels with her.

Garrus would come to the edge of the forest when she swished her tail and he'd follow her into the dark. He'd stare at the forest edge when she wasn't there, willing her to arrive, listening to the whispers of the wiser and older Turians mutter about virce dreams and sometimes being bitten is what you deserve for spending the day on behavior that many a Turian before him had proved was a waste of time and possibly deadly.

But Garrus had always done quite a bit of dreaming, and there had always been part of him that thought… there are so many things that haven't been done yet, maybe if I figured it out…

But he wasn't the prophesied Tamer. He had rarely seen a virce, never got close enough to approach.

Maybe he'd think he was on to something, then his hide would run to bleeding, then scarred and… and he didn't care. Some things were worth it. In fact he sometimes wished he had more scars to go with his life story.

She was worth it.

But virce dreams were not the same as a real virce, and never would he be able to have the ideal soft, domesticated creature curled up in his lap. The strength of the myth was reflected in the strength of the caution, but the end goal of the myth was to have a creature unable… or unwilling… to do any harm to the owner, the conqueror. It was against the Palaveni soul to be killed, maimed and defied so completely by something so small.

But he would be, if he pet her the wrong way, if he tried to prove that she had no venom, no fangs… he… would have a bad day and possibly a snake's attention.

But right now, with her small, soft writhing in his lap…and his finger along her lips against blunt teeth that would never think to bite, in fact might never think to open unless he insisted… he needed to work on that better man thing later…

For now, his virce had her claws in him, her teeth on him, her fur rubbing against him and he was mythic. She was through his hide, of his scars, of his wounds and worth. She would be the death of him one way or the other.

Now she was arched back, her head back so far her throat was bared, moans and whimpers and his name… Spirits the way she said his name, his finger pulled in finally to tongue and heat. He'd lost the sight of her eyes but he wouldn't lose her voice until he'd earned it.

She came after a panting build to helpless, her thighs trembling, her hand now tight on him and driving the rhythm she needed, learning her own way and teaching him, with him fascinated again by the way her body moved, the frantic drive of her hips, the shift of her breasts and the convulsive gasp and groan of her bared throat.

If he drove into her like he did before, he'd lose her right away, so instead he moved her legs so her knees were down on either side of his thighs, lifted her up with a hand on her ass, guiding his cock into her about an inch and then stopping, blurred and dizzy from the rush and the drive of her body wanting him sheathed deep inside.

He didn't let her, honoring the patience, keeping her voice, leaning to her and whispering "Not yet, my virce, stay here with me just a little while longer."

She whimpered and panted, he licked along her bared throat and kept her from giving in to gravity with his hands. She was glorious and weak, eyes closed and voice loud and hoarse, her hips gaining some of him before he withdrew and she tried harder. She was about to lose consciousness and he pulled her back from that, her panting breath gone beyond knowing his name, his mouth at her throat and her new name murmured in her ear. He gave her his voice, his cock, his hand on her ass and his finger on her clit until she arched back and surged. He held her in place while her instincts tried to drive her onto him harder and she could not do it, weakness and his arms making it impossible.

He kept her right there, pulling her back when she was close to passing out, with her wanting to stay awake but wanting with the urge of her human body to fall. She came again, frantic and fevered, pulling him in deeper with a shift to her hips she hadn't discovered yet until his vision blurred. Spirits, he needed to remember she could do that. He braced her arms on his chest so she could rise up on her thighs with his hands on her ass keeping her up when she faltered, hair down over her face and his heart ready to burst from the beauty of her.

She got weaker and weaker, more frantic, more instinct, hungry and whining, trembling. He let her take him until she was about to pass out over and over, and then began to lower his hands, made it harder for her to find consciousness, harder for him to keep from driving in and staying, as hard as it looked for her to stay conscious.

His eyes started to blur and his growl overcame her whine, her arms and legs lost their strength and she fell, and he let her, and she screamed, and he listened, his arms tight around her, pushing her down and in until she was gone and he followed, a kiss to her hair, a blanket thrown over her back, and bliss in his blood.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

This time she wasn't out as long and neither was he, an hour for him, two hours for her, contentment suffusing him, affection for his virce and love for his mate and gratitude for his efforts that brought him here.

She woke slowly and to a lazy smile and a light blush when she looked at him, and they stayed that way, not speaking, until she realized her legs were entirely numb and she'd been mostly folded in half long enough that he did have to carry her. Parting wasn't impossible on the strength of faith and caution, knowing that they both would come back together soon enough, and that headaches were mild if they took medication, and paused often to kiss, which they did gladly and often.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

She didn't wear much in the way of clothes, favoring a robe that matched the color of her eyes, and Garrus favoring nothing. He took human showers with her, leading her to ask "This place… looks very different. You had it renovated?"

"I did the renovations."

"Why not… why not just make it all Turian?"

"You might not believe me when I tell you."

"I will so."

"No, you seem to think I'm a great deal more… huh. Maybe sane's the word… maybe detached is the word… maybe both… than I really am or ever was. You seem to think that before I bonded to you, I was not interested in you other than as a remote Commander."

"Do I? Did I? I'm sorry. I… I think I died with forced distance, I came back to life with it, and yeah… sometimes I think of me as an impulsive mistake you made."

"Yeah, and I know that. I'm not sure how to convince you otherwise. Maybe here is proof. I haven't been back here since you came back to life, but I was here often. It was my place to be near you. I spent a week here a few times a year and… well, you know I talked to you every day, but here I could BE with you. I'm not sure I can explain, but the idea of having a Turian chair without an equivalent chair of the same quality for you… it would have been wrong. This was our place. I made up that math… after you died, here was yours, and then it was mine, and I chose to make it ours. I thought… if you had a ghost… she'd come here, and I didn't want to miss her."

"Garrus…"

"See, now I've made you cry."

"But you made me believe."

"It was crazy, I know… but…"

"It wasn't crazy. I did not have a ghost, but I'm here now."

"Do you remember being dead?"

"No."

"I can't tell if that's disturbing or reassuring."

"Maybe I was here."

"Then you wouldn't be surprised by the renovations."

"Maybe I only looked at you."

"What? This is quality work, here."

"Why is there only one big chair though?"

"Well, this is our chair, not my chair. You were supposed to be in my lap."

"Food… inspiration… and the perfect plan-ahead chair. Garrus… I'm sorry I died. I'm sorry I didn't tell you… that you glowed, you should have known that every day. I'm so sorry."

"I'm sorry I wasn't with you, I'm sorry I couldn't keep you alive, I'm sorry that wherever your ghost was… she wasn't here and she didn't know she had a home."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

"Garrus, what's a virce?"

"I'll show you." He pulled out his Omni Tool and showed her a picture.

She said "Wow. That's like… a cat lizard dragon. Does it breathe fire?"

"Might as well. Poisonous and venomous and the scourge of Palaven, making the Turians slightly jealous."

She laughed and said "That bad?"

"Worse than you think. Beautiful, smart, fast, fluffy, deadly. Insulting."

She laughed harder and said "You are so good to me. I don't have a nickname for you."

"I just like that my name can mean anything. You've sold me on that."

"You're kinda like a dinosaur… but… I can't call you that."

"Why not?"

"Oh… oh… OH… Ty-Ran-O-Sau-Rus REX."

"See, now that just sounds sexy."

"That was a terrible sex voice."

"It was fine, virce."

"If you say so, Garrus."

"I say so. Now you have to say my name that way… every time. Starting now."


	31. Chapter 31

Cara could tell they were both conspiring to avoid mentioning the end of the week as it stalked them. This blissful arc of time had answered questions and inspired whispered secrets and confidences. There was the promise of more time together in the future, but they were both desperate for each other, unable or unwilling to see beyond right now. Easy humor was replaced by comfort and silence. Arms stayed in embraces and mouths refused to part until they absolutely had to, and then they absolutely had to.

Garrus had begun to take time separate from her, usually while she was sleeping, to pack so she wouldn't have to do it or think about it. She'd been aware of diminishing food stores. The end of the cheesecake did result in a few tears and her fingernails digging into her palm, which he had carefully unfurled and kissed wordlessly.

She had strength, she knew it, and she'd go, but she did not want to.

The lives of those saved on Trireme and from the Collectors had validated their work. That mission had only been possible with both of them contributing resources from unique spheres of influence and expertise. But to mention that or rely on that reality would bring into the fore the fact that that mission also had a high probability of killing her at any point in its execution. They didn't talk about it. Inspiration had to come from outside of this moment in time and place in space and they had to look beyond each other. This moment of contemplating being apart and the pain of it was what had kept them apart. He knew if it was too painful for her, she would not wish to repeat it. He knew that if it was too painful for him, he'd attempt to prolong it. If they spoke they spoke of other things, both attempting to appear like the snow-covered cap of a volcano. They made themselves separate, sedate and secure, at a majestic height, both aware of and afraid that the feigned peace would be disrupted by looking too closely and feeling the heaving thrum of the surrounding landscape, measuring steam and pressure. They were both aware of the threat of eruption either spontaneous or provoked. Making it seem easy would be a potential insult and a lie. They found their way in silence, desperation in hands and eyes but not tongues.

Thane's influence in guiding them to convince each other to have this precious week together was kaleidoscopic and paradoxical when she tried to think about it. It was a miracle like resurrection or bond, transforming circumstances so calculation and contemplation was chaotic. She was overwhelmingly grateful for his strange intervention, but doubted Garrus would see it that way, doubted that she should see it that way, so she didn't talk about it or him, and neither did Garrus. Thane was a personal concern and a friend, but Cara didn't mention him except in passing once. "Is there…a Salarian project addressing Kepral's syndrome?"

"I don't think so."

"Can you… do you think… can you propose one?" She was concerned about bringing Thane's name up… but this wasn't about Thane only. Kolyat was at risk. Every Drell living in an environment unlike Rakhana was at risk. Every Drell on Kahje was at risk, and that was most of them. The Drell had been struggling and dwindling without Reaper attack. Their attempts to establish strongholds off Kahje where they could live without Kepral's in new colonies seemed to only create high-priority slaver targets. To her relief, Garrus understood and was focused on what she was focused on. Trireme. Mission. Responsibilities and expectations. Lives at stake. Lives of people they'd promised to protect. Slavers. Garrus's mother was alive because she had provided for Garrus to be Councilor and Garrus had provided access to research. Cara had promised Thane… Garrus had promised Kolyat.

"Of course I can. I should have done that already. I'll check first thing when I get back. I'll find out and if not, I'll find funding and get that started."

"Thank you."

"Of course, Cara."

He didn't admonish her to always ask him for help when she needed it… because she just had… and they were quiet again, one more thing done together steadying them in silence.

A week of him calling her Cara… him finding another word to describe her in virce, hardly calling her Limayeth in this place except to tease. But he would call her that again after they left. She would be back to being a fortress requiring siege. He'd have to wear her down to gain another week, no matter how much she wanted time with him.

So they tried to look to the future, to saving other people, and although it made her cry… she had to get back. They'd had their miracle, and now they needed to earn the next one together.

But… it felt like they'd already earned it, earned them all, should stay together, safe…

She wanted to be a ghost here, with him, every day, only needing one chair.

Garrus deliberately kept her… them… in Reverie to counter his clawing need to barricade them both somewhere safe. It was foolish and short sighted, and he should have tried to let them see what withdrawal would do to them, but he couldn't. He couldn't, wouldn't waste a moment with her, couldn't let her suffer, couldn't risk suffering himself because he would break… and run… and she would not be able to stop him, would not want to stop him. On the shuttle he kept her in his lap, joined because he could not bear to be separate.

They'd avoided all the consequences of Reverie being so strong by spending so much time together joined or kissing that now… now it was too late and he could not stop touching her. She was crying and his subharmonics went slowly crazed and keening. What withdrawal had been at the beginning of the week was dwarfed by what it was now, strengthened, saturated and reinforced, flexing its claws in their spines and hearts and minds.

EDI cleared the shuttle deck. He wanted to carry her to her cabin and stay there but he knew he couldn't. He couldn't walk her out because he'd be in camera and visual range. Cara could barely stand up straight. He put her luggage in her hand, kissed the tears from her face though she made more, whispered to her that he loved her, that they would have more time together, and let her go. He watched her straight back and wobbled step until she was in the elevator, waited to be cleared to leave. He only hesitated a few seconds, braced himself and then forced himself to go, teeth clenched to the point of blood, his mandible flat and straining against his jaw, subvocals building to a roar that combined with the engine's noise.

A promise he'd made to her echoed bitterly as pain built and he had to set automatic controls because he could barely see through the blur 'We will do anything for each other, even hide.'

Even hide from each other because neither of us wants to admit how much this fucking hurts.

Words of the elders echoed in his head and he defied them because he had his own bite, his own poison and now she was going to suffer because of it. He stubbornly held on to every moment of clawing pain because it came from being close to her, because she was going through it, and when it was gone he wouldn't have anything left. The echoed feeling of biting her and abandoning her to bleed to death in the cold built until imaginary loss and real loss merged. He'd caused and then abandoned her to pain and he hated himself. He struggled to continue to breathe. He managed to not tear the shuttle to sparks and shreds. He hated it too because it was moving him further away from her. He held still. The only potential, logical or preferred target for his rage and grief was himself.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Thane was aware of when Cara had re-boarded the Normandy, he had asked EDI to inform him.

He was curious but patient. He had anticipated her return and had made no plans to travel to Intai'sei. He had not placed surveillance. He had wished them well. He had enough faith in the Councilor's honesty that he had believed the destination and the promised return without the need for verification. Had more than a week passed, he would have become concerned but not alarmed. Had it happened his reaction would likely be better described as anticipatory rather than disappointed. He would by inclination and for personal selfish reasons embrace Vakarian attempting to keep her from herself. That would make Thane's Path clear. The Councilor had the resources and persuasion to allow for Cara's voluntary abduction, but he also had a conscience. The combination of Reverie and freedom of intimacy and sex would give them both excellent reasons to be metaphorically and literally carried away. However, taking Cara far from Shepard was not recommended. Thane would give her time to be convincing. Thane was attempting to integrate Cara with Shepard, not separate them. Vakarian would be biologically inclined to own her, whoever she was at any given moment, closing the gap of bond and hunt and distance over years.

Vakarian might come to his senses. Cara might convince him to abide by her sensibilities instead of his. If that extended into a timeframe where Cara was unable to express or maintain her truth, it was unlikely that Vakarian could elude Thane. Thane would find her and through finding her would find Vakarian, both with diminished capacity. The certainty and method of tracking had come through retrieving and reviewing Miranda Lawson's files on the upgrades and hardware installed during Cara's reconstruction. Project Lazarus was ingenious, complicated and unique. He did not comprehend much of it but he had not needed to understand the medical significance. He had searched for technical significance. While returning Cara to life a recommendation of implanting a control chip had been generated by Ms. Lawson. This had been vetoed by The Illusive Man and Liara as possibly personality altering. Thane had checked components, manufacture and design to ensure the chip had not been placed.

Thane had sufficient control over Cara, sufficient access for his purposes. A control chip would threaten that control and access. A control chip would threaten her will to command and he would not permit it. Thane would attempt to execute her will as defined by her, explicitly stated when she could not prevaricate or hedge. Her nature and her truth were not subject to easy change. Her will would remain paramount. That is what would win the war, that is what would keep her Whole. That is what would define who would be worthy of standing at her side. Any force, person or influence that did not reinforce and aid her would be countered by Thane's willingness if not eagerness to remove them from the board. She could oppose Reapers on her own. Vakarian was a potential asset as a cooperative entity and a potential disastrous liability as an opposing force. Eliminating Cerberus as a potential subversion point was a necessary and time consuming if educational task.

Thane's subversion of her would resemble hijacking a piece… but only back to her original state. If he were caught doing it, his actions would appear to be traitorous, treasonous. He had only her trust in him and its obvious fragility and folly as guard from failure.

He did not have enough time or life remaining to complete his task, the war and the risks to her emotionally and physically extending off the edges of the boards as his breath grew shorter. Reapers had unlimited moves.

From his investigations it appeared Ms. Lawson had not implanted a control chip. She had however placed a component capable of transmitting a tracer signal when activated. He was familiar with the device and was able to isolate it from the otherwise densely complicated and layered medical technicalities based on its presence on a parts list. Considering the trouble taken to retrieve Cara's body on Alchera, it was possible Ms. Lawson intended its use in the case of Cara's death in an unknown location. More insidiously perhaps it was to be activated if Cara had not been cooperative or had required further work after awakening. Perhaps if Cara had been granted limited autonomy and misused it in Cerberus's judgment. Perhaps retrieval and then implantation of the control chip had been intended as a contingency response had Cara not readily agreed to her proposed mission or had not performed satisfactorily. Four billion credits was an investment and plans for preservation of a proposed asset were to be expected.

Ms. Lawson's placement of the tracer was comparable to signing a painting under layers of paint. She considered Cara's body to be her work product and did not wish to lose access or creative control. She had in theory signed off on control of Cara's mind but not her body. She had not asked for authorization for this step and had gone to lengths to conceal it. Thane thought that to be fair considering the effort expended. He did not fault Ms. Lawson. He sympathized with her wish to maintain control over a miracle and the culmination of a life's work. Vakarian and Lawson had dominion over Cara's body in ways Thane did not. Thane had in theory mitigated Vakarian's more disastrous potential and provided Cara with an effective escape or rescue route should it be necessary. He would hijack Ms. Lawson's attempt at control. He would not tolerate control over Cara's mind unless it was his.

The presence of the tracer solved several problems for Thane. He need not develop a solution to track Cara on his own or incur the risk of being caught attempting it. Ms. Lawson had not manufactured the tracer component herself but had done her research and used the best available. It was unlikely to be detected on a scan for what it was and therefore unlikely to be disabled. It emitted a micro signal only on demand. The signal was intended to be detected across galactic distances and could look like static or other random noise generated from multiple possible sources, natural and technological. Detection was based on finding a preset pattern.

Thane had the keys and code to activation and detection. Ms. Lawson would as well, but Thane would be far more informed about Cara's movements and intentions. He would arrive at Cara's location before Ms. Lawson was finished filing for permission to authorize a search. Ms. Lawson was aware of Cara's absences but not the reasons for them. She would not be alarmed at the extension of certain time frames. Cara was by nature isolated from her crew. She did not invite questions or confidences, something that worked to Thane's benefit. He had to expend no effort to isolate her or minimize anybody else's influence on her, it was nonexistent.

Vakarian would certainly think to replace Omni Tools, but this tracer was embedded in Cara's nervous system, its location only possible because tissue had been regenerated around it. It would be impossible to remove without severe injury, and it had specific medical and technical warnings and justifications for leaving it in place at all costs and ignoring it on scanning. The medical description of the device was of vital sign detection and relay combined with the function of nerve growth stimulation and growth lattice. Thane could control it and if he located Cara with it, he could make certain it did not continue to transmit her location by disabling remote reactivation and resetting it to generate a new code to which only he had the key. It could be used indefinitely to track her. Ms. Lawson would lose her resource and would have no recourse in terms of reactivating or removing it if Cara chose to return to the Normandy and keep Ms. Lawson as a resource after her absence. Ms. Lawson would have no choice but to assume technical failure or unknown saboteur. This device did not guarantee reset or customer service for obvious reasons. The loss of the key was loss of control. It was expensive and illegal and there were no records of purchase or ownership.

Vakarian would not suspect its presence and Thane would have ample time to plan. Thane did not fear for Cara's physical safety at all under Vakarian's regard, only her freedom. She was a persuasive woman with Thane's venom reinforcing her need to return. Killing Vakarian would and must be something he'd brought upon himself, something Thane took pains to avoid doing except in the extreme case projected. 'Extreme' described Vakarian and Cara and their circumstances. Thane would attempt to preserve Vakarian's life. Not for Vakarian's sake, but for Cara's. Vakarian must have enough time to weave and noose the rope used to hang himself. Thane need only provide a sudden and regrettable drop in altitude.

For Cara's sake he wished them well. For his own sake… he would enjoy the short hunt if Vakarian proved it necessary. So far Vakarian had managed to navigate tests intended to tangle and trap him had he thought of himself first and only and not of Cara's needs and desires. Thane had provided Vakarian with Cara's truth and a boundary defined by death for trespass as a courtesy, as a warning. Death would be swift but not arbitrary. With Vakarian himself informing Cara of the threats made, it would provide proof to Cara that Thane gave Vakarian every opportunity to keep faith. Vakarian had Cara's body and Cara's devotion and love. It remained to be seen if Vakarian held her truth solidly enough to counteract the influence of bond. Reverie obscured truth in favor of reinforcing itself, a chemical feedback loop. Thane's venom and access gave him rights to truths Cara would not speak unless compelled, and only then under very specific questioning that would not occur to her to ask herself.

He sympathized with Ms. Lawson and with Vakarian, but their interests were not his, were not Cara's, and his sympathy was of no value other than as lip service. Thane was excellent at lip service.

Should Vakarian's death be necessary, Cara would be broken. Thane's Path would merge with hers and Vakarian's would end out of necessity. It would remain to be seen if she continued with her connections to an inherently broken Council or Spectre identifier or if she chose a new Path to forge. The loss of Council or Councilor or even the Normandy would be a setback but not an end. She was a powerful figurehead, many would follow her under any banner she chose to raise, and it would be known it was her banner. There were benefits to such a unilateral approach that her current situation did not offer. Thane would help her choose and navigate, and would be prepared with potential options.

If Vakarian were dead after an unexplained disappearance correlated with Cara's and then Thane's absences, Spectre Orbestan would know who had killed him. As straightforward as Orbestan was in general terms, grief would drive him to attempt to use Cara's sympathies against her. He would attempt to arrange for a reconciling meeting, and Cara would wish to try to console him, to explain. Orbestan would have no other goal but to kill Thane and would use Cara as hostage or information source. Thane would be required to end his life preemptively.

Thane would not blame Vakarian or Orbestan for their Paths. He admired them in his own way. They were righteous and good men. Cara was worth Vakarian's personal risk and obsession, Vakarian was worth Orbestan's personal risk and obsession. Yet they would die to the value judgment that Thane's risk and obsession served a higher purpose, as did Cara's. Thane would then assess the field, her pieces, and attempt the hijack back to self with what remained.

As he contemplated possible consequences and fallout, Irikah's voice sounded softly, concerned as she would be about Kolyat 'And what happens then, Tasak?'

'Then I do not know, Ree. Perhaps she kills me. She has the right.'

'She would not. It is not her nature.'

'The nature of people changes when loved ones die.'

'Not hers. Not mine. Not his. Not yours. Death, even her own, did not change her. The Council in chaos, a Spectre and Councilor dead, good men lost to… what… to love?'

'He would have abandoned the Council on his own, despite her warnings, despite mine. Vakarian would not be lost to love but to obsession. Orbestan would be lost to vengeance.'

'Like you?'

'Not like me, Ree. I am obsessed. I am not lost.'

'Was that my failing, Tasak? I was in love but not sufficiently obsessed?'

He thought for a moment 'You had no failing. I was raised to embody obsession, my eyes permanently altered to see the world a certain way. You were born to embody love, and your eyes saw the world differently.'

'And were you not deserving of devotion or obsession? Does love do so little?'

That question required either an hour in answer or none. As he so often did, he chose none. 'If she does not kill me and she is alone, requiring love, obsession and devotion in order to survive and prevail? What then, Ree? I ask a wise woman.'

'I know of your love. I see your devotion. Your obsession is chosen, as it always has been.'

'Chosen or fated, or fated to be chosen, that I will do it is decided. Am I of more or less worth if it is the will of the Gods or mine? Are you of more or less worth if I remember you as you were or if you speak to me from the Shores? I seek to oppose Reapers, Ree, they are not a delusion.'

'I am not harmed by knowing that her purpose, even your purpose, is and was higher than the purpose I held. My life was simple. I never saved a life.'

From inside Thane's head, she now knew he had taken the target that she had believed spared through her inspiration and intervention. She was a new woman, his thoughts and actions there for reading in the face of his silence and intent to obscure. The pain was sharp and real, echoing the loss of breath of Kepral's, the slow paralysis and weakness that would take him finally. In some ways not soon enough and in some ways with him facing an eternity of trial.

'You saved lives, your kindness adding up to healing and inspiration. You created life through Kolyat. What you did not do, what sets you apart from us is that you never took a life. You never saw how it might or could or should be done. You are not innocent, you are wise. You comprehend loss, you accept it. Whether I was born innocent or ignorant, I was not born wise. A great deal of effort was made to ensure that my innocence and ignorance were replaced with the will and training to take life. Your life, Ree, and what you stand for, is why she fights. She does not know you but she knew her parents. Her hope is that lives like yours could be lived without pain she could prevent. Countless meaningful lives otherwise lost. A meaningful life she had stolen from her. A meaningful life she forsakes out of the call to service.'

'She has a bond mate, and she loves him as you love me, and she will leave him as you left me. To take one form of judged life and preserve countless imagined others? So love is why, yet love is small against the suffering of all? She demands of him that he allow her to leave and risk herself without his protection. That is right for her yet not right for me?'

'She does. She will. She trained to discern. She chose to kill. Can you not see where selfishness and self…' Of course she could not see. He could not. 'Can you not see that I love you Whole, unalloyed. Unquestioned. There is no boundary to you, to that. Yet there was still slavery and disease outside our door, things about which you could do nothing. That was your blessing or curse, Ree, helplessness. I am not helpless and I cannot claim that I am. How many Drell lost to those plagues? You did your job well, my Ree. I had not cared about my targets, and you taught me to care. I was able now to see people where before there had been duty and death. How much pain bled into your intended sanctuary under the door as I watched? Seyafi's son lost to slavers. Milisor's suffering from Kepral's with no relief? You mourned with her, you comforted him. I grew to know I could not save them, but I could save people like them. You were a source of abundant love and you gave it. I had nothing in abundance other than training. But it was what I had to give. You always loved the world as it was and your answer to suffering was to endure and to heal. How many bodies were given to the sea? How many loved ones taken away with no body remaining to honor? I could not stand before those souls on the Shores and say that in a week, a month, a year, I could have spared their life or that of their child, yet I chose instead to contemplate the sunset. My gift was inferior to yours but it was all I had to offer. The difference is in what we saw, what we could do. You saw and did what you were born to see and do. I saw and did what I was created to see and do. They cannot be compared."

"And yet your guilt is great because you compare."

"And so I should be guilty, Ree, and you should not. You walked and chose the higher Path, one I could not navigate. I am responsible, I am guilty. Of what use is love against such foes as death and disaster other than as motivation to end them? How would they end if someone was not moved to end them when they See how? I care for her purpose and place as she does, more than she cares for herself. She is not Whole. Yet, like me, she can see and she can do as I did and do. Not with the same tools, but with the same eyes, the same resolve. My mistake was in believing that your nature had been corrupted by death and disaster, as mine had been. She convinced me that your nature was as it was every moment you breathed. You did not die broken. I did not break you. They did not break you. You are Whole. For that illumination and lesson I owe her… I owe to her the ability to speak to you, and that is beyond any value I can name. I owe her Kolyat's life, beyond any value I can name. Shall I grant her stinting service, or all that I am?"

"Not all."

"All that I can give. See the difference, Ree, between your nature and mine, between yours and hers, between hers and mine. They can be drawn close and compared, but they are not, never will be, equal. Your love… will never be seen as less in our eyes than everything of truest value. Inspiring others to become more, become better, and if that cannot be done with love, it is done with every other tool at our disposal."

"I do not know how to end Reapers."

"Nor do I. If there is a person with a gift in that direction it is Shepard. If my devotion and obsession move toward ending the things you wished to end, she wishes to end… Irikah… you did not need me to weed the garden, yet I did. That could have been done by any other, and as my hands set to that task, more blood pooled about your feet. What I did do I cannot regret doing. Should I retire to weeding a garden because it would be your idea of what would bring me peace? What is my peace measured against bringing it to others? You were grace, accepting of grief's tide, like a lotus that floated above. I was not. I was drowning. You were who you were, Whole, each day, unfathomable Grace in the face of adversity. I am grace of a different sort. You were a natural wonder, I was a forged knife whose only choice was to rust or go dull otherwise. I was a sharp edge with much of my life given over to recognition and execution of a duty to my People. I am not a man of peace, much as you may have wished me to be. But I did love, and I was motivated by love to choose wisely and consider what it would mean on the Shores. My love cannot serve a fight against Reapers on its own, yet added to my obsession and devotion it can. Can I not also love the fight, love her? Even… or especially if I cannot have her? Can love, devotion and obsession align when the need is great and the purpose clear? There was nowhere for my devotion or obsession to alight, to seek to change you, Ree. You were, and are… perfect. But in the wider worlds there is so much undone, so much to do. You loved me. You did not need me. You were a flower, needed only the sun and the rain and the soil. I felt that my presence blocked the sun from reaching you, poisoned the earth, called down drought as penance for my sins, for my failed responsibility. I am now needed. Would I love you less if I loved her more? Must you need me now because she does?'

'I needed you, Tasak. I was not as Whole without you as you wish to believe. You were my sun. I could not help but move to face you, open to you, wait for you. You do have choices, yet love is not one of them. Could she love you, be devoted to you or be obsessed with you?'

'She loves as that is her nature. She is devoted to me as any other living being for whom she would die. I do not wish to inspire obsession.'

'Yet you have, in order to draw her back.'

'Because it is her will and requirement.'

'And because you desire it.'

'And because I desire it.'

'And because you desire her.'

'That as well.'

'I would wish for things to be different, Tasak. I wish for me to be alive, for you to be in my arms, in a dry place where you are not ill, where the door streams sun and not blood, where worlds are not about to burn for the sins of those who lived ages beyond my count.'

'I would wish that as well if I indulged in wishes.'

'I cannot wish that you come to me soon. I cannot wish for good men to fail because they love too much. I cannot wish for her to break.'

'Do you wish to look away, Ree? Deny whatever Gods, madness or memory that allows you to speak to me? I will leave you to your light and seek you out when I have no more choices, no more obsessions to pursue. As I did in life, I wish to spare you the tedium and burden of my machinations.'

'The light without your voice is lonely.'

'As is the dark without yours.'

'You wish to go to her.'

'I do. I shall.'

'Then follow your Path. If your Path is with her, I wish you both the love of a living heart. It is what I have to give. I cannot walk it with you, but I will be at the end of any Path you choose, if you wish for me to be there waiting, Tasak.'

'I do not deserve you.'

'Have you not yet learned it is not about deserving? You asked a wise woman, so listen when she speaks. If you have no choice in your love, in your devotion, in your obsession, Tasak, I have no choice but love and acceptance. I will rise above the blood and you will dive deep into its tide, but you will return to me. I will be waiting for you as I always was when you returned except for the time when my death set your feet on the Path you still walk. It is my absence that placed you here, with her, opposing Gods. You were there for me at my death, Tasak. You gave all that you had to give. I will do no less. I will be there for you, always.'

That he let stand as the words sank into his mind. He breathed. Hours had passed since Cara's arrival. His patience had reached its set limit. She was at the beginning of her customary rest cycle in order to begin work again in the morning. He set to establish his right to share her space on the Normandy and that would begin immediately.

Reaching her cabin he signaled for entry. Her response was delayed, her voice weak in authorization. Entering her cabin he knew immediately something was wrong. She was attempting to stand steady at parade rest but she was sweating, wavering and near collapse when she saw it was him. Attempted discipline fell away from her frame as her eyes shifted from an expression of Shepard to an expression of Cara in pain. He felt the slide from question to responsibility for the right to see her this way. It caused a physically painful squeeze to his chest.

He crossed to her, lifted her in his arms, a hand to her brow determined she was feverish, sweating, her teeth chattering. He looked to her for explanation. She crossed her arms over her chest, hugged herself through the tremor and said "With… withdrawal. Reverie withdrawal."

The order of his mind had a moment of suspended disruption, a fist on a table and pieces in the air. He was immediately saturated with thick and hot anger at her, Vakarian and himself. How had they all failed to prevent suffering? How had she failed to signal it?

Ordered and cold answers came to him before he could phrase the questions aloud. She hadn't sought out Dr. Chakwas because what would she say? That she needed medication for what appeared to be withdrawal? Telling the truth would put Vakarian at risk. Not giving a cause would result in medical records that either indicated recreational drug use withdrawal or obvious Reverie aftereffects. That outcome would make Cara choose the path of pain and endurance. She was sick, not thinking straight and she could not risk her command by appearing to be a drug addict before her medical officer and crew. She could not risk Vakarian's independence by confessing to liaisons.

This in a young, inexperienced and small woman who had never had alcohol, Drell venom causing trance quickly, Turian bond obviously devastating, her lack of sophistication contributing to being unable to compensate for physique and idealistic purity. Vulnerable in every direction. Her only defense was to endure.

Except that she had Thane as her arm. She should have told him, and that was experienced as pain and anger at her ignorance, anger at his own assumption of her being reasonable. He felt the physical and mental chill of a critical lack of faith in his assumption of having sufficient control or access to her. He nearly opened his mouth to tell her exactly how foolish he believed her to be, nearly tensed his arms to shake her, but instead set his jaw to offset the anger and keep it behind his teeth, off his tongue, out of his embrace. His anger would be excruciating to her in her present state. Part of him wanted her to be reminded of that, that she was devastatingly vulnerable by her obstinate choice, but he restrained himself. He could not approach Dr. Chakwas on Cara's behalf for a remedy. What Cara needed, what he wanted and what he could do for her solidified. He would ask questions later.

He would certainly compensate for her lack of faith with reinforced venom. Vakarian had told him not to arbitrate their relationship with that method, but Vakarian had caused this state and had not helped her compensate. Thane's wrath in Vakarian's direction was not subject to the same tempering of mode and method.

He eased into the bed slowly, chattering and groans from her, sitting her up in his lap, with her swaying until he steadied her between his thighs, his arms under hers. He eased his hands to the back of her neck, a soft hum from him, a Drell sound of comfort, as a parent would for an ill or fussing child chasing sleep, as he had for Kolyat. He applied venom in long broad strokes of his thumbs along the sides of her throat, from the palm of his hand into her shoulders. She was wearing clothing he had designed for her and that pleased him momentarily, his hands on enveloping brocade and her skin. She did not protest, too far gone in pain, slumped forward. Tiremit begun while in pain could amplify it, so his hum was interspersed with soft words as questions occurred to him to ask later.

"Lasam, all will be well, your pain will ease."

Why did you not come to me?

"Slow your breathing, Cara, make your breath wide and deep."

How do I protect you from yourself?

She tried through a hoarse throat and coughing to breathe more steadily, altering her sharp and shallow panting. He was torn through a moment of knowing he could turn her, kiss her, glide his mouth over hers until she opened to him, venom and hunger assuring her no pain. Then there would be withdrawal from him as well as from Vakarian…but later, after he had let her sleep, after he had found a way to ease her broken breath and pain.

Later, after taking her memory.

Then he knew he would never take a memory of his touch from her. He could not replace one addiction with another. It would make her Path more treacherous and he would lose his footing on his own. He would be lost as well as obsessed. He had no right to her body unless she asked him in a moment of free will, which was unavailable at the moment. She could not consent. He must find another way with what she was able to give him willingly.

She had chosen this, and his pain came from her not seeking him as a solution, and he must bear that. She had writhed here in pain as he waited patiently and calmly, unknowing. That was unacceptable.

"Lasam, I will find a way. There is a way to ease your pain."

"You can't… go to Dr. Chakwas." She coughed and her breathing was harsh again, elements of panic before he soothed her again with fingers and hum, reassurance and reinforcement. Venom was fast as it had been before. He shifted her back against his chest, his mouth close to her ear.

"Breathe with me." He guided her until the pace of her breath matched his, the muscles of her neck under his thumbs losing some of their tension.

"Lasam, you must come to me when you are in pain and alone. You must come to me when you have a problem. I need this. I want this. You must find a way."

She said weakly and in a thin grief-woven trill "I'm not your problem. I won't be a problem."

"That is exactly right, Cara. You are not a problem. You will not be a problem. Not to me. Never to me. There is no threshold where there is no door."

Her voice was softer, confused "That's not… that's not what I meant."

"Listen to my meaning, Lasam. Listen and remember my words. I told you that I was yours but you did not yet understand how. Understand. You would wish to be there for me if I were in pain, I know it. I came to you when I discovered Kolyat was in danger, and you helped me. Had I not sought you out, he might have died. I trusted you, I came to you. You must do the same for me."

"Yes… but…"

"Yes. Yes is your answer when you are in need. You are not a burden to me, you are a gift. You incur no debt by seeking me out for comfort, for care, for company. It is not a shadowed thing or a threshold you must darken and pass. I am yours. I am your arm that reaches out without you asking if you may move it. Cara, hours of suffering have passed. Hours of suffering alone when I could have helped you. It causes me pain to know this."

"I'm sorry…"

"Remember, Cara. I have pledged my arm and also my Spirit. It is an insult and a waste to leave me idle when I could be of use. Venom right now will aid you. Your problem is caused by chemistry; it will be aided by chemistry. There are solutions, trust that I can aid you in finding them."

Her muscles relaxed further, her breath was easing. She did not argue or apologize.

"I will protect you. When you are in my arms you are safe. Your will is your own. I seek to serve your will, light your Path. Do not fear."

He waited until her breath was even, the tremors had stopped and there was no chattering of her teeth. She was likely still in pain, but not suffering as much. He said softly "I believe Mordin would be of help, without the ethical concerns of standard medical charting. If I approach Mordin with a question regarding human interactions with Reverie, I believe he would be trustworthy in that he would consider it a challenging problem to solve and he would have no interest in gossip. Do you concur?"

"Yes. Okay, yes. That might… maybe he could… "

"He will. You have venom now, likely enough to ease pain and strengthen will. Breathe, Lasam, and focus on my voice. Allow the pain to pass. Focus on keeping your breath at this pace. Do not fear. We will find a way, you need not suffer. I will go now, while you rest easier, and I will return soon with his recommendations and relief."

She said a hoarse, broken "Okay. Thank you."

Thane moved her slowly and carefully until she was curled on her side. He settled a sheet around her but not a blanket. She shifted quickly between fever and chill and she would be smothered. She clutched her pillow with whitened knuckles. He stroked a finger across her brow "Rest easy until I return, focus on breathing without pain. Let it pass by you without holding to it." She was still in distress but there was improvement in either control or confidence.

He asked Mordin to meet him in his lab via Omni Tool and he complied. "Thank you for your attention to this matter. I have a medical theoretical question that may lead to a medical necessity, if I may. Discretion is paramount."

"No monitoring devices in lab. How can I help?"

"Several scenarios of concern. I am interested in Commander Shepard as a sexual partner and I wish to assure I do her no harm. Spectre Orbestan is also of interest to me, there may be interactions. I wish to be prepared. I am aware of the effect of my venom upon Turians but not humans, or not humans of her size. I am unaware of the effect Turians may have on humans. Is it possible if I were involved with both that I would transfer Reverie from Orbestan to Shepard?"

Mordin shook his head rapidly "Doubtful. Reverie requires direct contact, not transferable. Your venom of interest. Would need sample." Mordin looked up and sounded cheerful "Assassin venom subject of STG long-standing pool. Could win big."

Thane inclined his head "I would be willing to give as many samples as you wish as well as access to the systemic alterations made during my lifetime to achieve the effect. Do you know of potential Reverie reactions in humans?"

"Some science, more conjecture. Can extrapolate."

"Is it possible for Reverie to have an overdose effect and subsequent withdrawal?"

"Variation allows for a wide spectrum from allergic to systemic."

"How would I counteract not allergy but systemic potential overdose if I wished to be prepared for such an event? Overdose of Reverie potentially to a human. Spectre Orbestan is large and Shepard is small."

If Mordin knew that 'hypothetical' was becoming 'obvious and specific' he gave no sign. Thane would not speak Vakarian's name, but he could not afford to misrepresent the species involved without affecting the specificity of the treatment. Overdose would be unlikely without bond and Shepard was only rumored to be bonded to one Turian. "Size difference a factor. Can halt adrenergic storm if overdose behaves like opiate withdrawal."

"What would those drugs be in the proper dosage for someone of Commander Shepard's size, assuming a substantial overdose?"

Mordin brought up a program on his Omni Tool and made calculations. Thane waited. Mordin moved to a cabinet and obtained several vials and then addressed dispensing them.

"Are there side effects?"

"Time frame eight hours. Potential allergic reaction eliminated. Most side effects minimized. Shepard's biometric profile and reactions well documented. Project Lazarus. Check initial breathing and heart rate for potential anomaly after dose. Cascading time release of components, active and palliative. Will result in sleep until critical timeframe passes. Pain relief, nausea suppression, acceleration of withdrawal sequence. Inadvisable for her to wake before eight hours. Painful. Greater risk for cardiac event."

"Would you formulate a treatment for a Turian, please?"

Mordin said drily "Hypothetically bonded human and Turian pair?"

"Yes."

"Differential for Turian? Biotic metabolism not present?"

"Yes. Exclude biotics. Bonding chemistry and average size for adult male Turian. Treatment for Shepard would be of immediate use, formula for Turian assistance would be helpful but no need for formulation."

Mordin didn't answer, busying himself with calculations and formulation. Thane waited and then Mordin transferred the Turian and the human formulas to Thane's Omni Tool and handed him an applicator. "Sublingual. Fast acting. Need blood sample to refine."

"Thank you for your discretion and assistance. If there is anything beyond venom that I can provide, my time is yours."

Mordin sounded cheerful again "I'll wait here." Mordin handed him a separate sample cartridge for the blood.

"I shall return shortly. My thanks."

Thane returned to her cabin and helped her sit, drew blood and asked her to open her mouth, sprayed the application under her tongue. "Mordin was helpful and discreet, you need not worry and you can approach him for help, but I would prefer if you allowed me to do it to spare you discomfort. Tell me if you experience side effects. I will relay that to him. This should help you sleep. Eight hours. You will sleep through the pain."

"But I need to work in six…"

The earlier anger and pain seeped incrementally into his voice before he modulated it after his first words "You do not, Lasam. You wish to, yet we can wait those hours for your health. You will work when you are best able. I will stay until I am assured you are resting and there are no negative reactions. I will return to Mordin, and then return here to you to watch over you. Authorize your cabin for my entry without need for your approval." He guided her through keying that into the remote of the door from her Omni Tool with her biometric override. He would not accept being locked out if she attempted something of this level of folly again.

She breathed a deep sigh after that and said "I feel much better… thank you… I don't…"

He did not find out what she did not… she leaned back and was asleep quickly. He watched her sleep for ten minutes, easy and even, his hand on her brow and then her cheek.

He considered the Councilor and chose to reassure him in good faith. A formula and no explanation would exacerbate what was already difficult for the man. Despite Thane's anger at both of them, they were in pain and parting had been excruciating. Cara had a habit of calling Vakarian before retiring and would be unable. Even though they were just recently parted, to be unable to speak to her would be a heavily felt blow if it had been arranged. Thane need not be concerned that their relationship had gone badly if Reverie was this strong on their parting. If either Vakarian or Cara had been disappointed, Thane would wait to be told. This was not the herald of disappointment, but a sign of overwhelming success and subsequent fall from chemical grace. Cara would likely have told him that things had gone badly while she was writhing in pain. She would have told him that it wouldn't happen again to reassure him. It would clearly happen again. She had not turned in his arms to seek comfort for failed romance. She had chosen to suffer for its success without complaint.

He considered sending a text explanation to Vakarian, but requested a video connection assuming that Vakarian would wish proof of Thane's assessment in her sleeping form. He was answered by a haggard Councilor, hoarse and strained, in a shuttlecraft. "Councilor Vakarian, I am certain she would wish for you to be informed of her condition. She is unable to contact you herself. She was in severe withdrawal, unwilling to contact Dr. Chakwas for a remedy. I obtained one through Dr. Mordin Solus, assuring discretion and no medical record. She is sleeping."

"She wasn't answering… I knew… with what's happening to me… she couldn't be okay but I hoped… I didn't leave messages, I just hoped she managed to sleep."

"Do you have anything that can aid you in your withdrawal?"

"I didn't… no. I didn't want to take anything, I wanted… no. I've been worried about her, thank you. I can't… don't worry about me, don't let her worry about me, tell her I'm fine. I don't… Thank you. I'm so sorry. I should have thought of this, I should have… I didn't know it was going to be this severe, and once we were… fuck. I brought things for headache, Medi-Gel, but I swear, I did not think it would be this bad."

Thane believed him, Vakarian sounded like a broken man, anguish in his voice, his face, and deep through his eyes.

Thane moved the camera to take in her sleeping form. "She is well at the moment. She has no side effects. This will last for approximately eight more hours. If there is any change I will inform you, but I suspect she will sleep well. I will watch her. She insists upon working tomorrow, but I will help her through that. I am assuming psychological withdrawal will have a further timeframe and its own difficulties for both of you. Councilor Vakarian, I know you do not trust my intentions, but distance did not and will not serve her. You are both part of a greater community with a further goal, and for that she must be protected from harm whenever possible. She suffered significant pain in isolation for many hours due to not seeking my assistance. We would all be best served working together. If she did not answer you should have informed me. That is a failing of trust and I do not wish to repeat it. Not with her physical or mental health at stake. A cardiac event was not out of the range of possible consequences. I can accept that you are at diminished capacity, but you must try harder in the future. You must consider me a resource for her care and not competition. I must watch her. I must have access to her cabin without your suspicion making her reject help. I must be able to influence her when she chooses to suffer alone. I seek to end her isolation, Councilor, not extend it, and I will not permit you to isolate her. I accept that this was unpredictable and possibly unpreventable. I understand that there is no research on Turian-human interactions, that she is particularly vulnerable to Reverie's full and strong effect, and that with no experience you were unprepared for its impact. I can forgive you for that. I do not accept that I was not informed sooner. I am angry, Councilor. She chose to suffer to protect you and you must bear the weight of that as must I. I am inclined to retaliation. In this case I will not. It is in part my responsibility for arranging for you both to consummate your bond, it is my responsibility to arrange for coping with the aftermath of that choice. This was not acceptable as an outcome."

"I… no, it wasn't. Thank you."

"I have sent a formula recommended by Dr. Solus. Proceed on the assumption that he is aware that you and Cara are bonded and availing yourself of his assistance. I did not use your name but you were identified as a Turian of average build with a strong bond to a human. I have asked Cara to allow me to be her proxy in this matter so she need not lie. If there is a lie to be told, it is best told by me on her behalf. She is not equipped for subterfuge unless it is on a battlefield, and I am attempting to arrange her personal life so it does not resemble a battlefield. I trust to Dr. Solus's discretion and silence and also that he understands clearly what the formulas represent. I will have it formulated and waiting for you at the Citadel when you arrive. If you follow Cara's pattern, you are an impractically honest man and will not have connections capable of providing psychoactive drugs on demand without a threat to your position. I will provide her with an applicator for future use."

Vakarian did not refuse the assumption of further need for this service. "Thank you. Yes, please."

"You are welcome. I hope it grants you some relief."

Vakarian laughed, short and bitter and said "Thank you. I… thank you. Please… just… take care of her. Please."

"I will, and you are welcome. Good evening."

Thane looked down at Cara, unable, unwilling to leave her, but he must to keep the bargain struck, venom for discretion.

He checked to make sure her knuckles were not white, her breathing was deep, her heart rate steady. She appeared comfortable. He passed a hand over her forehead, knelt by the edge of her bed to whisper to her, soft and reassuring, determined and inevitable. He was leaving, but he would return, and he would always return for her when she needed him.


	32. Chapter 32

Thane returned to Cara's cabin approximately two hours later having exchanged venom, anecdotal experience and scans for Mordin's expertise on creative pharmacy. Thane believed Mordin would have aided her without a bribe, so his venom was an exchange among allies to further a team's interests, not a cross purpose accounting of favors. Considering anybody to be an ally was becoming a treasured luxury with the attendant fear of loss and suspicion of veracity. Here he was exposed to extraordinary people, exceptions in their field or species, superlative in one form or another, putting aside lucre, status and life expectancy for a cause. Anybody clearing the hurdles of passing Cara's judgment and surviving in this environment earned Thane's respect.

Thane believed Dr. Chakwas would likely have covered for Cara if approached discreetly. It was likely true that Cara knew herself to be incapable of discretion when she chose to suffer. Cara had inspired T'Soni and Vakarian to aid her on her mission to stop Saren, and they had seen beyond her acting ability. Moreau and Chakwas had returned to her command. The crew Cara had gathered was inspired by her, if occasionally bewildered. He believed Cara's crew to be loyal to her personally, but he was aware she wanted to create no ethical conflict for them. Mordin had no ethical conflict. Had she not approved of Mordin's intervention, Thane would have had few options other than what mitigation skin contact with his venom would provide. Regardless of the efficacy of an envenomed kiss to aid her, even with its justification to spare her excruciating pain, he would not have given it.

As he had mentioned to her, ego was often part of his calculations and here had a tactical and personal significance. She had not spurned him but she had held him back. She was still and always attracted to him. He preferred that she experienced that fully without him mitigating it or making certain she knew he was available. Until the necessity of a kiss had presented itself as a practical concern, he had been unaware that he had already decided. His kiss would not be impulse or utility. He would enjoy the ability to put his hands on her, smooth venom into her blood and thought into or out of her mind, but his hands would never stray.

Any assumption of erosion or incursion into her will over her body would have to be explicitly and definitively countered. She would have to convince him. She would have her faculties and she would make a choice. It would not be stolen. His pride and vanity were strong things with their own motivations and opinions, more than sufficient to keep him from theft of what she would not give or begging for scraps of affection. He knew he could, as Vakarian feared for excellent reasons, abuse his power over her and wipe her memory repeatedly. He could have her kiss, her passion, her body and her devotion as well as her already existing love. Instead his pride, vanity and Path demanded he would only have those things if she gave them, knew she was giving them, and committed herself to him with the unquestioning faith she was uniquely capable of generating, an extension of the unquestioned faith she already had in him for reasons that defied reason and followed Cara's rhyme.

She was a goal in her own right. Without doubt he wished to have free reign over her body as he had free reign over her mind, but she was a person and a symbol. She was as a person unpredictably and devastatingly attractive. He was never braced sufficiently for its strength. The unpredictability of it is what made him lose his sense of control over the sensation. It could fade to friendly, protective, almost parental or mentor in character, and then with a word or a glance or a turn of her mind he was suddenly submerged in the need to disregard her will and assert his own. It required her presence, it required her strange alchemy that would spark and smoke in him as she was blithely unaware of the effect she had.

These moments he could recall later with clarity. He had reproduced that urge countless times, transformed those moments to launch points. His memories of Irikah were venom blurred and so very Drell, a dance with each move, every turn of a wrist or sigh sacred and ordained, perfect. Cara was not perfect and his fantasies did not make her so, but made her instead elemental, unpredictable, shocks and lightning. Green eyes, always her eyes, delicate and expressive, and that capacity to see, that urge to protect, that fire that defied whatever she chose.

Irikah was a dance whose steps he knew like his own breath, every memory treasured. Cara was and would be unpredictable and unimaginable, her lack of sophistication or expectation somehow wrapped into the entirety of the storm. Something in him that was young, free and determined, his answering rhyme without reason invested his arms with the need to have the right to carry her away to wherever he chose, kiss her until her secrets spilled not from venom but because they belonged to him. Some part of him had decided that had they met three years ago he would have saved her, would have had years with her, and nothing could convince him otherwise. It was unreasonable, unpredictable and invested with the passion of parts of him he believed long subdued and silent. Some part of him rose up in the presence of her defiance and answered her with his own. If desire was a warm thing that smoldered, the unpredictable passion she evoked was of carefully banked embers shooting into flame.

It was becoming more predictable, his guard around her increasing. Still never enough.

Yet separate from that she was the living conduit and connection to every other goal and person that had meaning to him. She had opposed Reapers when he had not known to do that himself. She had brought Irikah back to light his heart. She had saved Kolyat. She must be protected, she must be preserved, and if she chose to be protected and preserved from him, so be it. She would decide. The odds were low that she would choose him as a mate, yet not impossible. It would be mate, not partner. He had no interest in fleeting opportunity, only now definitive commitment. Impossibility was something she courted. He would do the same. She had chosen him as a companion and he would not waste that opportunity or take it for granted by asking for more than she could give.

That it would require that Vakarian be gone and proven never worthy of her regard was present in his mind, but again pride and demand guided him here as well. He could not stoop to conquer. It would be unworthy of him, unworthy of her, even unworthy of Vakarian. It would be unworthy of his Path.

Instead of moving to her bedside and checking her temperature with a pass of his palm and then settling the blankets around her, which he did, he could choose other actions. He could, with whispers EDI would never hear and words Cara would never remember cause her to wake ravenous for him. Orbestan would be asked to leave the ship. Thane would convince Cara to never speak to or meet with Vakarian again, deny him entry to her life. Thane could be a gatekeeper that isolated and monopolized her body and mind. He could watch and guard her every moment of their fight. He could be there for her without serving another master as Vakarian did. She would have undivided and unalloyed devotion. She would not turn him away. Now would be the perfect time to do it, Vakarian vulnerable to rejection and Cara in pain, easily influenced. A small twist to her memory, where she believed Vakarian had claimed their bond ended due to her humanity and incompatibility. A communication to Vakarian where he would be asked not to attempt to speak with her. Done under compelled circumstances she would be convincing and Vakarian self-hating enough to permit it.

It was unworthy.

He had apologized to her for sexually objectifying her. He had not stopped doing it. Her odd blend of foolishness and vulnerability did not stop him in any way from imagining his revised fantasy. It no longer involved him pulling her to him over a Pon-Ifa board for momentary and fleeting pleasure and proximity to power. Now his desires had changed and he wanted everything she had to give along with her will dedicated to giving it. Nothing less. His pride would not permit Vakarian's love to be gained in a way that was not entirely eclipsed by any love she could feel for Thane. She had quite a bit of work to do if Thane were to find her worthy of his attention.

He smiled at the idea, a half twist to his lips, that he was much more interested in theoretical devotion than any scrap of real attention. He would never kiss her with distressed confusion in her eyes. She would meet him on his terms or not at all. It was not the Gods demanding that he be fair or kind, it was a product of his own ego, and it would serve as a deterrent from stealing a kiss or stealing or sowing a petty thought. Ironically now he believed through her treatment of him that under different circumstances, he would stand beside her. She saw it, she knew it, it drew him to see and know. It was true somewhere in her mind, that made it possible for him to rely on the reward of what was unspoken but ever present in her deep green sea.

His Path had signposts and he had a compass, and the compass was her will. It would guide him and it was strong. If she chose him at any point in her Path, it would not be through a shift of uncertain sand that could shift back or be regretted. He would not lean to her or lose his balance seeking a moment that may or may not come. She would create a life and devotion that she was capable of creating or it would not exist. The reality was that bond to Vakarian did not have the same effect upon Cara that it had upon Vakarian. Vakarian had no other choice. Cara did. She wished to behave as though she was Turian and had no choice, but she was attracted to Thane, heart beat and breath and flush of skin making that clear. Thane believed he would always have that reaction from her. It was in her nature, she no longer attempted to deny it and upon his discovery of it she had not been outraged but conciliatory, as though he deserved to know and keeping it from him had made her feel guilty. She believed she was withholding something, and Irikah and Vakarian were only shields and mirrors. They were not the full truth. He understood his attraction to her, but there was still mystery as to why she trusted him, why she allowed herself to be guided by him, why she allowed and did not protest venom.

Not all her secrets had been observed or explained, and until they were, or until he was beyond her call and with Irikah on the Shores or whatever awaited him after death, he would never fail to appreciate the solid trust in her eyes, the pounding of her heart and the catch of her breath in his presence.

It was more than enough as it stood for a man who had expected to die in obscurity and disgrace. He had been granted the opportunities she had given him to set his life in further order and inspiration. It was not a question of whether or not he could have her. He could, without a doubt. Now the question was whether or not Vakarian had earned enough loyalty to overwhelm whatever it was Cara kept in her mind and blood that belonged to Thane. Thane had given her so many reasons to kill him or reject him. It seemed no intrusion or invasion would ever cause her to ask him to leave. She had been held in her unconsummated bond mate's arms, quietly defied Vakarian's will and told him he could not reject Thane's aid and he could not seek to kill the man who proposed touching her publically.

You have taken risks for me, Lasam. You have placed your life, your command, your bond mate's life and career as well as your crew at risk for me, and I wish to know why. I wish for you to tell me why because I deserve to be told. I wish to feel your lips, your body under mine before I die and have truth spill from you because it is what you have to give to me without pretense or shield.

That his choice to not kiss her had the benefit of not mitigating pain that Vakarian had caused…was one of the oddly clashing and dovetailing characteristics of their combined efforts on a tortuous Path. The final and highest goal was disruption and destruction of Reaper forces. She was the Light on that Path. Her will was absolute and her kiss would not be tentative or situational. It would not be to mitigate pain. They both knew pain. She would endure with what venom could be taken through her skin.

His kiss would come at a higher price. He chose all or nothing. I vouchsafed my arm and my Spirit. My ardor is free. My mouth, my body would require you granting your arm and Spirit to me, Lasam.

As for mitigating her pain he could take what precautions he could to arrange for a stock of medications more suitable to humans since she did not do that for herself, avail himself of Dr. Solus's recommendations. Mordin had elaborated on his initial offering with solutions and formulas to aid Garrus and Cara in different circumstances. A solution to stave off withdrawal and force function, metabolically costly but possibly necessary, to be followed by the application already given when rest was permitted. He had offered a solution of step-down effect to be taken to hold off a full-blown withdrawal before the disastrous cascade started and a potential formula to suppress a full absorption of Reverie to be taken before contact.

Thane had brought with him a recommended first meal, toast and juice, to keep her stomach from rebellion. He had set it aside. Cara would in theory sleep for five more hours.

He was ever aware that he also had the potential to be watched on this ship every moment. EDI was inextricably linked to potential monitoring. As an unshackled AI her options were greater, her limits few. Thane could not hack or bypass her. He could only attempt to gain her cooperation and understanding if not collusion. It was heartening to think that EDI would be monitoring her health or status from a noncritical viewpoint that would have detected a life-threatening health risk and called for assistance had Cara been in extremis.

He was an anomaly from EDI's point of view, at least his presence in Cara's cabin. He had developed a relationship with EDI to whatever extent a Drell could arrange with an unshackled AI, so much of EDI's potential unknown and unfathomable. He did believe her to be loyal to Cara, likely guarding her secrets as zealously as Thane did. Had EDI wished to betray them, they would have died on the Collector ship when the stress of unshackling and insurgent ability had the highest chance of causing it.

He had an established prerogative in his perceived role as her confidante and friend. He would extend that to include lover and protector among crew as well as the ship herself to widen his advantage.

EDI would not comprehend the interactions of assassin venom or Reverie with Cara's presentation. There was no research available on either subject that would help EDI predict outcome. Her monitoring might be omniscient but not likely accurately interpretive. There was nothing to be done if EDI was indiscreet or spoke of what she knew. She had already observed Cara's conversations with Vakarian if she had been monitoring and retaining that information rather than wiping it. She had Goddess-like power over their lives. He would have to risk her caprice and court accord. The risks EDI posed to their lives overshadowed the risks to Cara's social situation. Cara chose to remain on the Normandy and trusted EDI. He had no choice but to abide by that. He was wealthy but did not have a viable alternative ship to offer if he objected to EDI's potential for havoc. He must make his relationship to Cara privately intimate if not privately sexual and cultivate EDI's regard. If EDI watched him as closely as he watched EDI, perhaps that was best for all.

In Cara's absence during the week Thane had done what he could to gather information and gain the confidence of crew. Orbestan no longer expressed dislike, though they had not spoken privately. The ship was not a place for such discussions. There was eye contact and tentative accord and that was all that was necessary. The mood was celebratory still from the Collector ship mission. Thane had engaged in card games and drinking games, relaxed and friendly. He had appeared to be intoxicated and appeared to lose, though both of those things had been feigned. He had taken a great deal of ribbing about his ability to comprehend the nuances of card games. He had claimed he was a beginner and lost money. He had given the impression that if someone wished to bring something to Shepard's attention, he would be a path to her. Kasumi had a request that Cara had not addressed, and he had spoken to her at length on the subject. Kasumi was unaware that attempting to have Cara infiltrate a social gathering populated by criminals was a potentially lethal mistake. He doubted Cara would agree to it on her own for excellent reasons. However, he could and had arranged for his own invitation under an alias and he would escort her through. Kasumi would attribute the success to Shepard.

He closed his eyes for a moment, considered his adrenaline and anger and chose to meditate. He did not wish to expose her to the relative chaos that was his thought process at the moment. He would be calm and he would have answers for her when she woke. He would have a direction for her to take to strengthen her reputation with her crew.

He would make sure she could eat without her body rejecting it entirely.

He would make sure she would not make the mistake of shutting him out again.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

An hour before she was to wake he eased her into his lap while still in the bed, the same position that he had held her in before he'd left to speak to Mordin, working venom and whispers into her slowly, his mouth at her ear. He was certain many of the words would not translate as they were Drell idiom and image. Poetic. It was a many purposed pleasure and privilege to touch her skin, claim the right to watch over her, share a bed. She would wake with less panic, less pain. It would mitigate what psychological pain she would otherwise experience and help her step back into her life on the ship rather than stumble.

He would take the opportunity to establish his right to be here, reinforce that the outcome with him involved would be better than what she could get for herself, the same way her odds of a mission succeeding were better with his presence. He provided priming regarding coming to him for help. At the moment he was in the physical position of a lover, but he was solidly her protector, intimacy extending and not threatening trust. Her categories and potentials fell away and so did his. She was a young woman in pain who would be experiencing loss. Love and devotion were in his hands and voice, obsession fallen away and unnecessary to the moment. He could give her something she would always understand and had not rejected other than to feel herself unworthy of it at times. Kindness. Though she had secrets, those secrets had patterns, and he knew where to walk.

She had her own intimacies, her own rules and he was so far into her mind and story that she willingly collapsed from command before him, allowed him to press venom into her skin and considered him a refuge. That is what he would be for her. All other motivations would stay outside, restless and hungry until or unless she invited them in one by one or until he crossed back over the boundaries he respected in her presence in order to indulge in a fantasy of a woman that grew clearer and more compelling and more his. It did not matter that she'd spent a week with Vakarian as much as the fact that he was here, now, and she needed him.

If he knew his Lasam, she would be melting gratitude and would not permit or even perhaps feel outrage or intrusion. She would accept him here with attendant blush and heart rush, her faith sustaining and innocent.

That was her paradoxical power, to look at him with so much trust that he did not wish under any circumstances to disappoint her.

He was smiling, a small curve to his lips when she woke. He could tell she was awake. Her breathing had altered from the deeper rhythm of sleep. He did not speak and waited for her. After a time during which his smile grew, she said "Oops."

This sound had no translation, but the tone was conciliatory, not angry. "What does 'oops' mean?"

She said "Uh… it means I woke up and if I'm right… I'm… under the influence of serious pharmaceuticals, Reverie withdrawal and venom."

"Correct."

"Oops."

"Is that a term of distress?"

"Well… I don't think I can do any more damage, it seems there's someone holding me down."

"Not down. Simply still. You being disoriented and possibly willing to extend self harm was not out of the question."

"It wasn't… self harm."

"Then what was it?"

"Oops."

"I see."

"I don't."

"I believe you."

She was quiet for a moment and he asked "Are you hungry?"

"Ugh. No. Food has not been easy. We made ourselves eat, but it made me nauseated. But we did eat. I'm not malnourished. I am… also not really tired. How long did I sleep?"

"Eight hours."

"I… you don't have to hold me still. I promise to not break anything important. Including myself."

"And if I don't have to but I wish to?"

"Then I don't know what to do with that."

Her voice was soft, her heart rate elevated, her skin rushing with blood and he was content. "Tell me about your week."

"It was heaven for two people. At the end of the week we had to think about other people and we had to leave. He did most of the thinking and planning, mostly I was capable of crying and being quiet by the time we left."

"Did he hurt you?"

She said quietly "Yes."

His arms tensed and he drew in a breath not knowing what he'd say, but she bubbled over with blushing enthusiasm and followed up with "It was WONDERFUL."

He started to laugh and then so did she and she was snorting giggles long after his arms had loosely closed around her waist, her leaning back against him.

He said softly and with teasing accusation "You did that on purpose."

"Couldn't resist." She snorted again. He shook his head, then eased himself from the bed with his hands in a careful ruffle of her hair. He brought her breakfast though she still did not want it, and asked her to eat it, and she did, still smiling between bites.

Her smile faded after her duty was complete. She had reassured him and he had assured himself that she was herself. Then she said "I have a headache. I'm probably going to have a headache for a while, but it doesn't hurt as much." She did not speak of whatever else dragged her smile from her, there was more. She missed Vakarian, she missed being herself. But she was determined to be Shepard.

Thane handed her a tablet and she stared at it in her palm "I'd rather… just have the headache."

Thane met her eyes and said solemnly "Lasam, we do not know what exactly happens to you in Reverie, but we know it is strong and if the medications Mordin gave you work, it means you are deeply addicted. I have seen this in people enough to know, and I went through my own period of being addicted to the stages of increasing virulence of my venom. I have adapted, I get a constant dose and I am immune, but I remember."

She kept her eyes on him and said "You were… addicted to yourself?" Her brows were drawn.

"I became addicted to what they introduced into my system to make me what I am. Cara, my training was insidious and brutal. I am still under the influence of years of conditioning and chemical control. They determined everything; my diet, the drugs I took, the surgery I had, and any pain that resulted was endured, not mitigated. I do not wish to see you in pain that can be prevented. You must understand I would see it as torture. If I can prevent your suffering, I feel I must. Your choices have consequences and choosing to simply weather them will not bring you relief any more than someone choosing to believe that Reapers do not exist will keep them safe."

"That was mean, that Reaper thing you just said."

"Lasam, you need to adjust to life with Reverie. You need to be able to transition, and since Reverie is external chemistry to which you are not adapted, we need to develop external chemistry to ease the effect."

"I'm sorry nobody was there to help you when you were a child. I'm sorry if I'm rejecting help you know I need… I don't want to need it."

"Do you also not want to need me?"

"That… no, that isn't true. I don't… want to be a burden. I want to solve problems, not create them."

"Lasam, I am a man who has overrun the wills of other people with only my venom and a few words. You woke in my arms and you knew… I would not harm you. I am a man with great potential for harm, yet you trust me. Trust Mordin. This is his area of expertise. If he believed you would not benefit from this, he would not suggest it. I will watch and I promise you I will not allow harm to come to you, I will not allow the medication to take you from yourself. I wish for you to have your fight and have your heart and have your mind."

She looked down at the tablet in her palm again "I'm complaining to a man who lost his wife about being separated from her bond mate after a week of bliss. I'm waking up from a near coma he had to put me in because I didn't know how. I'm…" She swallowed the tablet and said "I'm sorry, Thane. I don't know how to do this."

"You do. You will. Or we will. You are not alone, Lasam."

"You did all your suffering alone."

"Perhaps something we share in impulse. I wish to change that for you."

"How… are you suffering, Thane, in ways I can't help you? In ways I don't see?"

"Between us, Lasam, I was not the one with a week of life and psyche shattering experiences. I am well. Comparatively."

"You asked me if I would want to know, want to help if you were in pain. I know… look, I know I've got venom and who knows what in my veins… but I do. I do want to help. If I can. I trust you."

"That has never been in doubt. You have helped. I have not had a friend, Cara. I consider you a friend."

"So… life and psyche shattering experiences, huh?"

"We cannot always settle for simply being shot."

She laughed "Yeah. That's… easier. Being dead was easier. It was quiet."

"Do you remember nothing of that time?"

"No. Nothing. These are at least better memories, though they hurt."

"Mordin has hopes for solutions that could prevent Reverie from affecting you as much. I relayed some of the Turian solutions to Councilor Vakarian."

She smiled and said softly "Thank you. You're never going to call him Garrus, are you?"

"He has not invited me to do so. He is not a friend."

"You talked to him?"

"I assured him that you were well, updated him on your circumstances, showed him that you were resting peacefully, told him that I knew you would have wanted him to know."

"Thank you. I wish you were friends."

"Given that he is jealous of my access… that is not likely."

"I know. Was… was he okay?"

"No, though he wished to give you that impression. He did not want you to worry. He was in the shuttle, on automatic, likely docked by now. I arranged for Mordin's recommendations to be available on his arrival."

"Aren't we a bunch of stupidly noble… I don't have a word. I don't swear."

"I'm attempting for merely noble."

"Go you. It's working for you."

"Are you going to insist on working today?"

"Oh yeah."

"Then allow me to stay with you. I can brief you on crew. I can relay what I have learned in this last week."

"Thane." Her eyes were cresting with tears and she said "I don't… I don't have words for what you've done, what you've given me."

"I have taken as well, Lasam."

"And if you hadn't… if you hadn't… I can't see. I can't describe…"

"I saw."

"I wish I could tell you… I saw… but I didn't. I don't know about you. I want to."

"You will work and then if you wish, we will speak this evening if you are able."

"Thank you."

"My truths are yours, Lasam. I know and you know, not all of them and not completely, just as your gratitude or friendship can only take a certain shape. But always be assured, Cara, you are a fierce friend to have. I am blessed."

"A fierce… slightly dizzy… friend."

"In that as in all things, Lasam, I offer my arm."


	33. Chapter 33

Cara had her head down in a sheltering palm as she said "Thane, this is a very bad idea."

"It is an excellent idea."

"Why don't you do it yourself then?"

"You must gain practice in social settings in my company."

"So this is primarily… a field trip? Rehearsal?"

"Kasumi requires assistance, Lasam, and if she does not get it, it is possible that she would leave the ship and attempt it on her own, possibly dying in the attempt, possibly tortured before that. That is not acceptable. You require her assistance. She deserves and needs help. If you do not go with me and I accomplish it on my own, then you are not the beneficiary of her loyalty."

"Maybe I shouldn't be. You'd be doing all the work."

"You spared Kolyat and I am the beneficiary of his loyalty. I did not participate."

Cara sighed heavily. He won some arguments by arguing both sides effectively and leaving her in the frustrated dust. Her head ached and her intellect was in swollen knots that didn't release. "What was wrong with Kasumi's plan?"

"It is unlikely that such an obvious… I believe you would call it a Trojan horse… would pass security checks. Your arms and weaponry would more likely be confiscated and both of you detained. She can cloak, yes, but the risks to her are too high. She cannot remain cloaked indefinitely and there are cameras, biometric sensors and heat detection that would make her vulnerable. I can take her place. I will be welcomed and sought after by the host. I have attended functions at his residence before. I would be a familiar sight. I have not appeared with another guest before, but that would not arouse suspicion. An invitation to this function is a signal that he wishes to conduct business. He would insist on privacy in his sanctuary. He is a man who enjoys his pageantry. You will not require arms or armor. We will not draw the attention of security forces attempting to break into a place where we are guaranteed to be invited. You and Kasumi would be at higher risk had you used her plan. She is desperate, though I did not tell her so."

"Which name are you using here?"

"Benis Kerrat. You are Alison Gunn."

"I… am arm candy? Completely superfluous to the mission."

He smiled and said "Yes, you are arm candy on a field trip, Lasam. You cannot look like yourself, your height and your coloring would make it impossible to avoid association with Shepard. We will stop at Illium beforehand and I will arrange for wardrobe and makeup. You also cannot afford a betraying blush. Your skin will be covered."

"That's a blessing."

"With makeup, Lasam. Your made up skin will be exposed."

"Oh. I'm wearing the heels, huh?"

"You are indeed wearing heels, and if you cannot walk in them, you will be leaning on my arm for support the entire evening."

"You're kinda mean, Thane."

"I am a vicious killer with no morals, Ms. Gunn."

"Oh boy."

"Do not say that on the grounds."

"How 'bout I just keep my mouth shut and lean on your arm?"

"We can strive for a better portrayal of a criminal, but if that is all you can manage, I can achieve the demeanor of a man escorting a lovely yet inarticulate woman for obvious reasons."

She blushed and her head tipped down. "You're really, really mean."

"It is up to you to give the impression that I chose you as a companion for your conversation."

"Aaaugh. Doom." She bit her lip "What if I talk weapons?"

"I'm assuming you'd be discussing legal, military or Spectre-grade arms, which would be of great suspicion to those who use illegal versions. Not wise."

"What… can… I talk about?"

"I will aid you in rehearsal. Benis Kerrat does not talk often. His character is already determined. Unfortunately you will have to make do with his company."

"Are you telling me I'm going to have to learn the questionable art of criminal small talk?"

"The useful art of all small talk, Lasam. When I am your arm candy, we will not be discussing the Council or the mission, the odds are that we will be overheard under every circumstance. Contrive to be witty yet not informative. Benis Kerrat will draw attention at a gathering at Hock's. You as Shepard will draw that attention anywhere we are seen together. I will be an unknown Drell, occasionally with an unknown son. You will make us famous. Benis will make Alison Gunn famous."

"I'm going to have to talk about things I don't care about?"

"Yes."

"You are a cruel man."

"I have established that."

"How high are the heels?"

"From what height do you wish for me to look down upon you?"

"Ugh."

"Do not begin conversations. Speak only if directly addressed and answer briefly and with disinterest. Do not be drawn into conversations and take my lead. It is most likely that conversation will be directed to me and the less attention you draw the better. If you feel lost, smile at me, Lasam. Smile at me as though you are planning on killing me and you have just discovered how."

"What?"

"You have a particularly evocative, deadly smile."

"I do?"

"You can ask Vakarian the effect your smile has upon him. He can explain where I should not."

She smiled, but not one that was deadly. It was nice that she had some credibility as a criminal.

He said thoughtfully "If you are not up to it, we can dispense with the Gunn identity and I will present you as a mute pet. Perhaps with a control chip. Perhaps with her translator removed."

He looked at her as though he was really considering it and enjoying the potential before she quickly said "Alison Gunn it is then."

"Excellent."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

After dinner, which Thane had collected and delivered for her, he convinced her to forego her habit of availability in the mess hall for today and she agreed. He would grant her privacy for the few hours in the evening when she showered, spoke to Garrus and got ready to sleep. He would arrive near to her sleep schedule and stay in her cabin. She was shaky, emotionally and intellectually exhausted, and still had the headache she'd been trying to hide since the medication Thane had given her wore off. She didn't ask for a new dose. She couldn't really get on board with having all of her pain erased as though it never happened.

It happened.

Thane had blessedly distracted her and she didn't spend the whole day… pining… obsessing… about Garrus. At least not openly. She'd like to say that he was a new distraction, but she'd been pacing her cabin thinking about Garrus for large chunks of her day for a long time. Now she spent her time worrying about him and wanting to be with him rather than worrying about her mission and trying to avoid him.

Thane and Cara had spent most of the day in her cabin with him catching her up on ship life, crew viewpoints and easing her into the idea that she should be more engaged with her crew. If she was unable or unwilling to do that, he would act as intermediary.

She had heard Garrus's echoed dry and somewhat hurt response when she'd said she didn't know how to talk to him.

'Saying 'hello' works.'

Thane was attempting to instruct her in remedial 'get along with other people' and the fact that a solitary assassin was much better at it than she was…

This is dire.

She was going to have to learn to walk in heels and talk while walking. She was going to have to learn to say hello and say it more than once. She was going to have to smile. She still needed to talk to Russ. She should check in with her crew. Kasumi had mentioned this when she'd been recruited and Cara had forgotten about it. An outing at Hock's was halfway between terror and humor. She found it difficult to be intimidated by criminals with canapés. The way Thane described them they mostly sounded like puffed up lizards in mating season trying to impress each other.

She imagined little lizards posturing and hissing at each other with colorful frills, tiny holsters and shiny toy guns. That's… just kind of cute.

She wasn't afraid if Thane was going to be there. She believed him when he said that he would be the king of the room. Of course he would be. If he said it would be easy she believed him, and she believed him if he said her main problem would be trying not to turn her ankle.

That…would be… a problem. Please don't make him have to pick her up. He was DYING to pick her up and carry her out. Please.

Garrus had carried her out of Noveria because the back of her knee had been bored out by a venomous Rachni stinger and she'd still rather face that again instead of heels and Benis Kerrat's amused boredom with her inability to behave like a grown up woman.

She took a deep breath and chose to behave like a grown up woman. First with Liara.

She opened a channel and got a call back response quickly, though she realized Liara had been sleeping.

"I'm sorry, Liara, I don't know the time difference on Hagalaz."

"It's okay. If you think anybody else does, you'd be wrong."

"Want me to check back in later?"

"No, now is good. What's happening?"

"Well… things have gotten weird… er."

"Uh oh."

"I wanted to give you a personal heads up that you might… be seeing things about me… and Thane being a couple. We're not. It's cover because Garrus and I are. We just spent a week together."

Liara blinked and said "It sounded like Cara Fanning just had sex and is going to lie about it. I'm… huh."

Cara almost winced "Well… if it sounds like that it's because… it's that. But Garrus and I are bonded. Thane is a decoy. He insisted. He's… I don't think I have words."

"You'd stammer through them anyway."

"Yeah. And you probably wouldn't believe me and might not be able to sleep."

"Are you happy? About Garrus?"

"Yes. Deliriously happy. Separation is much harder than it was. Addictive harder, Reverie hit me like… something colorful. A volley of varren. A crush of Krogan. I'm going to need medication to manage it. It was… it was Thane that convinced me… well… us… that we were wasting time and taking foolish risks with consequences of bond."

"Smart man."

"Yeah, he is. And convincing. I just didn't want you to get reports and wonder… we're coming to Illium and we're going on a mission in an undercover way."

"Now this I have to see."

"I'll be at the apartment. Thane will be there too."

"What… is going on, Cara?"

"Sex, intrigue and violence."

"Oh. Well… good for you?"

"Hopefully. Please get some sleep. I'll see you soon, already changed course. About a day."

"Can't wait to see you. Can't wait to… can I meet Thane?"

Cara thought a long moment and said "Think very carefully here. This is a bit like inviting a vampire into your house. You can't take it back. Hopefully he's sufficiently occupied putting my life into order according to his standards. I'm not saying he would bite. I'm saying if he decided to bite there isn't much you can do about it."

"You can't just say something like that and expect me to pass up on the opportunity."

"All right. Here's me thinking carefully because you can't with the information you have. I would need to introduce you as my friend and the Shadow Broker. I… do my best to not lie to him. He has instincts and he has venom and he will just ask me and I will tell him or he'll find out on his own. I'm certain he's researched you because you are part of my life and he wants to understand my life. I wouldn't suggest attracting his attention. He found out… everything about me, Liara. Things I didn't know. He found out who my parents were; their real names. I presented a mystery and he solved it and he's still… well, I'm still sufficiently mysterious. He bugged my quarters, he bought me an apartment on the Citadel, he intimidated Russ. He talked Garrus into not killing him after proposing a charade where he publically touches me. He found out… everything. And now he has us all sufficiently under an envenomed thumb. It's for my protection and I believe he is doing this for the mission and because he loves me… but think very carefully about this. I'm also fairly certain that if anybody actively opposed me, he'd kill them. He's threatened Russ and Garrus with death under certain circumstances. You're on my side and he's adopted me, you're not a threat to me. If he perceives you as one, you might be dead or backed into an impossible corner like the rest of us. I could ask him to leave, but I won't. I need him. I need this man on my side. Very badly."

"I'm on your side, Cara. I'm not a threat. Say that part about intimidating Russ again?"

"I know you're on my side. Russ is a long story. I will explain. It's all a long story. I want to minimize your potential exposure."

"This isn't about exposure… it's about you."

"I wouldn't suggest attracting his attention."

"Do you… like him?"

"I love him. Garrus knows that. It's… impossible that he and I would be together for lots of reasons. We all… know that. Impossible for me. Not impossible for him. But look at where I am, bond consummated, trying to be a grown up and integrate my command with my life. Because of Thane, who could have instead gotten me, Russ or Garrus killed at any point, ruined my mission and venom doped me. He's done… I can't tell you what good he's done with the information he gathered… in ways that he's admitted to gathering it. The fact that it should have gotten him killed several times and didn't… yeah. Terrifying person."

"You… do impossible things, Cara. So does he."

Cara closed her eyes tightly "Yes. We do. I know that. He's saved my life. He's improved my life. He's saved my mission. He glows."

"If you trust him, I will. Cara, I worry."

"Me too. I'll see you soon though and you can see for yourself if that's what you want. I really… have no idea what he's going to be like when you meet him and he'll give you any impression he wants to give. Probably of intelligent, kind politeness."

"Oh. Okay. Well. I'm… Cara, I worry."

"Me too. But he got me a kitten! Look, her name's Carousel." Cara showed pictures and made smoochy faces.

"She's beautiful! Cara, I still worry and I will see you soon and ask about your Turian, your Drell and your kitten." Liara signed off and Cara sighed.

We all worry.

She took another deep breath and felt a soft tremble and a shiver. Garrus.

Just his name and her spine wanted to know where he was so it could stand on its own and walk to him.

She opened a video channel and it seemed she woke him. He'd told her not to bother with learning his schedule, call him on hers. She still felt bad but she had to say "I miss you."

His voice was hoarse and he looked haggard, pained, but he smiled and his eyes warmed and he said "I miss you, Cara. We did it. Hurt like hell, but we did it, and you are worth everything."

"We are worth everything."

He closed his eyes and sighed, slumped back slightly and she said, teasing "I see you didn't put a shirt on."

He smiled and her heart squeezed. He said "Well, obviously that was for bait."

"It worked."

"Cara, are you okay?"

"No, and neither are you. But we're tough and strong and we'll survive."

"Thane helped. I owe him. Again."

"Yes, he did, and I do also. He's a friend. You're my bond mate. Between us what matters is that we did it together, and we would have survived."

"He said… heart attack was a possibility. I didn't know. I'm so sorry."

"I know you didn't know. Neither did I. There's nothing to forgive."

"I can't believe that."

"Garrus. Listen, please. I know you're worried about me. You don't need to be, not about this. It won't keep me from you. I did a little reading. Virce… infest things. You're infested, Garrus. I'm not going away. You'd have to try… really hard… to get rid of me."

He laughed and said "That's… that's awful and wonderful and thank you and… ew."

She grinned "Made you laugh."

"Made me love."

"Me too."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

When she cut off the connection to her lifeline, her mate and her resurgent reason for living, the pain and the distance overwhelmed all her otherwise successful distractions. Thane wasn't here and she wasn't being watched and she curled up on her side and cried.

She was tired, but not physically, left to mental and emotional exhaustion and just enough energy to have to restrain herself from taking action to go to Garrus. Reverie worked against her again. She'd been put under often, gotten more blissful rest in the past week than she'd had cumulatively in a lifetime and had been put through a powerful medical near coma on top of that. She'd probably have to take medication to sleep and she did not want to do that. She needed… she needed to learn how to live like this. She didn't want to admit to pain or loss, didn't want to be the sort of person that could not survive one of the greatest gifts and blessings she'd ever experienced.

She tried to manage her sobs but they got stronger and they seemed never ending.

Thane entered the cabin and she was mid sob, which she stifled and then scrubbed the blanket over her face.

She wasn't going to complain, she wasn't going to drive a wedge anywhere tender. Thane loved her and to be forced to comfort her when she wanted someone else… she couldn't, she shouldn't…

And it didn't matter, because he heard, he saw, and he passed a thumb along her cheek, his eyes huge and dark and seemingly understanding of the whole mess, which was impossible.

She didn't protest when he lifted her again into his lap as he had before and she felt his presence in a comforting but inevitable sense the way a fence might rise, razor wire and sharp swords. This was Thane. Don't struggle. Instinctively she chose passivity because when she said she had difficulty with conversation he casually recommended feigned slavery as a solution. With Thane she did it the easy way or the hard way. The hard way or the harder way? She did it. That was the lesson.

If she tried to squirm away he'd find words, he'd have venom, he'd find a way to make her agree even without venom. He was reasonable and she wasn't, not now. Not about this. He'd underline all that was gauche and immature in her and offer his alternatives. They both knew he could. Enough venom, enough whispered words…she felt it, she knew it, and she… whatever he was going to do… despite all evidence to the contrary… she trusted him and that somehow made it worse and better and incomprehensible.

He spoke, his arms around her, blankets around them, and his mouth to her hair "When you are in love, Lasam, your mind will seek your beloved. Years later, I can wake from a dream where I know she is dead, where I see her dead, and my first impulse is to reach to her beside me for comfort, to tell her of my dream. Nonsensical because I never told her of my dreams while she lived. I reach and my hand finds nothing but cold space until I touch something solid that is not her, is never her. A Drell never forgets, but there is a horror or a bliss to sleep where I find myself where I most wish to be, or fear most to be, and I wake to the emptiness of the loss of her fresh on the tips of my fingers."

She tightened her arms around his back and chest and tilted her head down and cried, knowing that feeling. Knowing what it was like to wake up and think she smelled bread or saw the right color light of the sun of Mindoir on her blanket, and then had the slow horror of finding herself in barracks, knowing she couldn't scream, shouldn't scream.

It doesn't stop. It never stopped. For him he would never find Irikah. She would never find her parents. Now there would be too many days where she wouldn't find Garrus. Maybe she would find Garrus if she was careful, if she was smart, if she managed to save… everyone.

Everything she'd fended off rushed in, all the distraction melted and she had a moment of desperate panic. It was too much, it was too strong. Once she thought about Garrus she wanted to run to the shuttle and get to him. When she tried to sleep and her control slipped away…she couldn't. This was the feeling she'd put him through every day for months after she'd gotten back. He'd been alone for years struggling while she was dead. She had a long way to go to even touch the amount of suffering Garrus had endured for her.

He'd done the best he could, did the best he could, smiled and laughed and…

And it was going to kill her, it felt like it was going to kill her in her sleep when all the distractions and purpose and things she could think slipped away and left her only with what she felt.

Thane's fingers were along the sides of her neck and she began to feel the venom soak in through her, unresisting and horrifyingly welcomed because this was all too much. She couldn't sleep, she needed to sleep, and what she felt would not change unless he made it happen with fingers and whispers and the understanding in his voice.

He asked softly "Do you have nightmares, Lasam?"

She did, terrible things, smoke and fire, sunlight and bread and now cold blue Turian eyes that were dead or dying or distant. She didn't have them with Reverie, but now she had even more fuel for her mind to flex needy claws and dig them in until she tasted blood and when she woke up…

She nodded.

Venom stroked into her throat and he said quietly "Not while I am here. I will watch over you, Lasam."

It was the first night she hadn't been drugged into oblivion but slowly serenaded with venom and his hum that was like lapping waves on a peaceful shore.

Words and names attempted to rush through her mind and tears tracked down her face, with her idly wondering if she'd ruin the leather of his jacket. His jacket was worth more than… he was worth more than…

Priceless wasn't enough, thanks weren't enough. There weren't any words to express being carried when steps were excruciating.

She needed him and he knew it, and she didn't have to say so. He was her arm that moved without being asked. There was no debt. There was no threshold.

She focused on breathing, venom warming and relaxing but not so much she lost herself, and that was a luxury. No control chip. Translator not taken.

She was Cara and Lal and Shepard and Commander and Limayeth and Lasam and Virce and they were all mute and enduring.

He was the guide who could show her how to endure the unendurable and she believed him when he said she would have no nightmares, allowed him to whisper her to sleep, unquestioning and unanswering, tears and ache and knowing when she woke she'd be in the wrong place with the wrong man and he'd be in the wrong place with the wrong woman, and it was better…and worse…than being alone.


	34. Chapter 34

She did not sleep through the night. She had nightmares but Thane woke her and eased her back into sleep, soothed trembles and tremors and tears with venom and murmurs.

She had to take another shower in the morning. Sweat had gathered and dried on her skin so many times overnight she was wrung out and lank. Thane got breakfast and they ate quietly. She decided to leave her room. Yes, leave her room. Without training wheels or an escort. Thane asked her if she required assistance. She smiled, not a scary smile, and told him that she'd be fine.

He bowed, smiled and left. Not a scary smile. He was just… inherently scary and she needed that. She did not want to need that, but then she went and put herself in scary places and so this was all self inflicted.

She had a long day to get through of mea culpa and not really knowing what to say, but deciding that 'hello' would be required.

She was still fragile and now physically tired and that… that was not likely to change any time soon.

After Thane left she said "EDI?"

"Yes Commander?"

"EDI, my life's weird."

"It seems your death was weird as well."

Cara smiled "You've seen… a lot of things I've said and done. I trust you, but I haven't… I haven't told you that I trust you. I trust you. Thank you for protecting me in all the ways that you have. Thank you for saving our lives, thank you for your support."

"You are welcome, Commander. You do many things and you do not wish for it to be known that you are doing them. You appear to do things that are true yet not true. This seems to be the case for many organic life forms. I am trying to learn my way."

"Do you have any questions?"

"Oh yes."

"Go ahead and ask."

"You are Garrus Vakarian's bond mate?" 

"Yes."

"Were you his bond mate before you died?"

"No. That happened when I came back to life."

"When?"

"The… the first day we docked at the Citadel."

"Turians do not bond with humans."

"This one did."

"And you are also… bonded or is that wrist bound or married to Thane Krios?"

"None of those. Friends. Friends and attempting to create an illusion of relationship because… Turians do not bond with humans and Garrus's job would be at risk if it were discovered we were bonded. Thane is trying to protect me. Us. The same way you are and have, by protecting my secrets."

"Rumors believe you to already be bonded." EDI sounded fascinated and proud of herself for venturing into social complexity and coming to a conclusion.

"But they can't prove it."

"I do not understand."

"Yeah… I can't really say I do either. Think of it as an attempted fire wall or buffer or honey pot to attempt to keep out hackers. Like radio silence while releasing a decoy. I don't want Garrus to lose his job. It would make the fight against Reapers much more difficult." If not impossible.

"I will aid you, Commander."

"Thank you, EDI. If you have more questions please ask."

"I do."

Cara spent a good hour explaining her bizarre behavior to EDI. Cara gave her permission to call her Lal in mixed company, Cara privately. At the end of the conversation EDI said "Cara, I have noticed that you speak to the inanimate. If it is helpful…" EDI sounded shy. Cara's heart swelled "I am inanimate. You can always speak to me."

"You're animate, EDI."

"I… would like it if you still spoke to me. I can be silent if you wish."

"I have always counted on your silence, EDI, but that's not why you'd be my friend."

"Why would I be your friend?" That reflected some anxiety with Cara's bad phrasing, confusion in a tentative and tender spot, which Cara tried carefully to clarify and patch.

"You are my friend because you are brilliant, loyal, you've saved my life so many times and I would be lost without you."

"I do have excellent navigation."

"And I really like you."

"Thank you, Cara."

The tone in EDI's voice was layered and poignant. Cara tried to remember lessons of mea culpa. "EDI, if you need a friend, if you have questions, if you want to talk to someone, I'd like to be that person."

There was a momentary pause and then an entirely different tone of voice, an unshackled gush of sorts, and Cara felt like she'd found kin. "Thank you, Cara."

Cara then went with the intention to speak to Dr. Chakwas, long overdue. She still did not want to do it and moved with hesitation. She stood at the door considering reprieve, but the swish of it opening shifted intent to flee to only one way forward. She stepped inside. Karin raised her head. Cara stepped closer and said "I have a confession."

Dr. Chakwas's brows raised. Cara said "You asked me… if I'd drink brandy with you… I told you I would…later… and I didn't. I'm sorry… I don't… I don't drink and I didn't want to admit to that. I didn't know what to say. I still don't… but I didn't want you to think I forgot or that…" Cara met her eyes and said with a slight quaver "I'm sorry."

Dr. Chakwas smiled and indicated for Cara to sit. She did.

Dr. Chakwas said "We haven't had many opportunities to speak."

"I haven't made many. You came back to work with me. I want you to know I appreciate that. Every day. I'm just not all that good at talking to people."

"You don't look well, Commander."

Cara tried to smile "What, I'm pale?"

Karin leaned forward and took her hand "Commander Shepard, I appreciate your honesty. You haven't been by and you didn't check in after the Collector vessel, then you were gone for a week and I want to make sure I take the best care of you that I can."

"I should have… and I should. I'm afraid it didn't occur to me that… with everything going on… oh. Well. I have been avoiding you. If you run a scan on me, you might find out that I'm under the influence of Turian bonding chemistry. It did not occur to me until very recently that it was medically relevant and you deserved to know. I only wanted to protect you from the vulnerable place it puts you in by having that information. The vulnerable place that puts us in. I'm officially a drug addict. That potentially means your inventory of treatments being depleted in a specific way and requisitions for medication being vulnerable to analysis. I've placed you in a difficult if not impossible ethical and practical situation without your consent. You were already there, I just… didn't warn you. Or maybe I thought you'd think less of me. Probably both. You volunteered to patch me up when I got shot, not… not this. Whatever this is. I've only considered it to be medically… terribly inconvenient and I have been more concerned about concealing it than I have been respecting your medial prerogative… respecting you. I've lied to you and I've evaded…" Cara swallowed hard on that thought and took a deep breath, continued with excruciating confession. "I'd like to say I would have told you before a mission where I could have been injured and it affected my treatment, but it turns out Turian bonding chemistry drops my IQ precipitously and I'm too accustomed to secrets to give any of them away, even to those who deserve and need to know."

Karin Chakwas's smile was wide "The rumors are true."

"The rumors are true."

"Good for him. He's a good man and he has excellent taste. Good for you. Is that where you were for the week?"

"Yes."

"I'm happy for you both. Now that I know I can help. I promise. I'm here to help you, Commander. If I wished to work for the Alliance or the Council, I would be."

"I'm also… I think I'm about to cry."

Dr. Chakwas handed her a tissue. "Perhaps I will join you."

She blurted because the truths came in a set "Thane and I are pretending to have a relationship."

"You have excellent taste in men, Commander." She sounded impressed, not shocked.

"Thank you. Mordin helped us by formulating some remedies that may make it easier for me."

"I will confer with him. If I may, I believe Miranda would also be of help on the subject. There is a great deal about your resurrection that I can only guess about."

Cara panicked "No, please…no. I… no. I don't trust her. Not with this. It's not because she would tell anybody, it's just that the more people know, and the fact that she's the most likely to actually write this down somewhere that it will be read, because… Please. No. If she relays any of this to Cerberus, they'll… no. I can't stress enough that this is not just personally embarrassing and painful, but that secrets like this have lives of their own, they have gravity and things begin to fall their way. She'll turn me into data. That data, no matter how hard she tries to conceal it, will find its way to an analyst at a Cerberus desk and with enough clues… the exposure would be unbearable. I'd be better off just taking out banner ads in 'Voyeur's Weekly.'"

"As you wish. I will not involve Miranda. I will not chart your treatment. I will arrange for inventory security. You are going to submit to an exam immediately."

"Yes ma'am."

She spent a few hours in the Med Bay having every last everything tested, going over every symptom and being given a shot of something she had no idea what it was, having her Omni Tool programmed to report to Karin all sorts of things, reservoirs of anything she could want to use as medication titrated by symptom and a lot of lecturing about using them or else Karin would know and would find her and make her sorry, and if that failed, she would find Garrus and make him sorry.

Cara smiled through most of it.

"Please also inform Sere Krios that if he does not wish to be sorry he will also inform me when you need assistance."

"Yes ma'am."

"I've monopolized you enough. Please eat, and please come speak to me another time when things are less dire, if that's possible. I'll secure a bottle of something nonalcoholic. Your visit would be treasured and I promise to not turn it into an interrogation or an examination. Please visit more often."

"Yes ma'am."

Cara wandered out slightly dazed and feeling physically much better but the ripples of security breech, even to those she trusted and needed, induced existential nausea. She went to the mess hall and got something to eat, forced herself to sit in the mess, a place that made her nervous. No matter where she sat it was always an exposed spot, open doors or transparent glass to her back no matter what she did. Food was beginning to taste a little bit better. No nausea, but no real appetite and it was still a chore. Nobody talked to her and she was grateful. Even though the interactions had been positive she was worn down and raw. She made it to the elevator and to her cabin, didn't think Thane was going to follow her but locked herself in the bathroom anyway, comforted in a smaller space where nobody would intrude, find her and change what it was she wanted to feel right now. She didn't know what it was but she just needed to be alone.

She tried, very hard, to have no regrets. She'd do it over again, she would, she knew it, she wouldn't take it back, but regardless of her discovering she had inspired loyalty and she had friends and allies, she wouldn't have needed them to take a potential hit for her if she had managed to maintain her first instinct to protect him, protect herself, protect the mission and defer bond.

Anybody discovering this that wasn't sympathetic would have the immediate smug thought that Commander Shepard couldn't control herself and couldn't resist placing everything… everything… at risk. Lives and plans and strategy, alliances and secrets… for him. Even that was generous. Not for him, for herself. They wouldn't see it as love but as loss of self control, a weakness, something to drive a wedge into and wait.

She couldn't control herself.

It was inexcusable, unforgivable, the biggest intentional mistake she had ever walked straight into with eyes wide open because she couldn't control herself.

She was accustomed to curiosity and problems spurring her along to solve them but right now her brain was mostly unavailable, everything was interpreted as pain due to physical hypersensitivity and the raw, stinging existential sensation of chaos opening up. She couldn't control the variables, she couldn't control herself. She could only wait for consequences.

She turned off the lights and tried to do nothing but breathe, cool tile under her fingernails as something she focused on to block out everything else, just the texture of the tile and the lines of the grout. It took about 20 minutes for her to calm her breathing and feel the silence and the dark close in over the raw pain, sensory deprivation and limited focus on the irrelevant but immediate doing what immersion could not. She did not consult her parents. She anticipated love, which was an abundant resource at the moment, but also anticipated silence as the only answers to any of the questions she might ask.

When Thane arrived a few hours later she was studying. She smiled at him but no more and he smiled back, engaged himself in his own study or meditation and did not speak.

She didn't go back out, stayed in her cabin until they berthed on Illium.

She sent a text message to Liara informing her they'd go straight to the apartment. Liara probably knew they were berthed before Cara did. Liara said she'd bring food.

Hopefully Cara was past retching.

She wanted to whisper 'please no cheesecake' but didn't. She did choke on the words and on the sure knowledge that she possibly could not approach cheesecake for the rest of her life without wanting to cry and run to her bond mate, wherever he was.

She briefly imagined Garrus dying in the fight, and in the aftermath there would be a bakery, and a cheesecake, with Cara staring at it until she decided she could not risk passing by a bakery again. Her risks and rewards would all be over. She'd shut herself into Intai'sei and wait for nothing to happen. She'd talk to him.

Thane offered her his arm and she took it. Garrus knew, Russ knew, Liara knew about their relationship being fake, although it wasn't fake, it just wasn't sexual except when he touched her or looked at her and parts of her melted and blushed, and when he looked at her as though she were the most precious creature. And when he spoke to her. And when he threatened people's lives on her behalf. And when he took life at her order without question. They would both sell that impression… to everyone. To everyone. Especially to a Turian who watched and trusted and tortured and would not mention it to her. To a Turian who would have to…

Oh… oh dear. Garrus's mother did not know… and Commander Shepard was about to be squired about Illium on the arm of a… a what? How to explain Thane…

Oh no.

There was no… explaining Thane.

Just as clearly as Turians knew Garrus was bonded to Shepard, people would see that Thane was in love with her… and that she was in love with him in a way with borders and lines and explanations that would never be believed because they were in the order of 0.1% probability.

She did not lean on his arm and she did not fall.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Liara greeted them with a hug to Cara and an easy introduction to Thane, who seemed to experience no surprise at all that Liara was the Shadow Broker.

There was food and it was good and she did not get sick. Liara asked about their upcoming mission and what was so undercover about it?

Thane replied "An appearance at a party. Acquiring an item required by another of Shepard's crew. An opportunity for Cara to walk in heels."

Liara laughed and said "Cara, you stomp."

"I what?"

"You stomp."

Thane nodded. "I have told her so. She has yet to grasp the nuances." He had found an ally.

Cara sighed. "They're shoes. I walk in them."

Liara reiterated with more emphasis. "You stomp. You can't walk in heels like you're wearing boots." Liara stood up and took Cara's hand. She said to Thane "The ones she'll be wearing are higher?"

Thane nodded and fished through his luggage. Scarlet stilettos with a thin, at least four inch heel and it probably couldn't get higher, she had small feet. Cara said "Thane, NO."

Liara and Thane ignored her. Liara said with breathless reverence "Those are lovely. May I?"

Thane gave them to Liara, who properly admired them and then turned shocked eyes to Cara, saying "Cara, you cannot say no to these shoes."

"I just did."

Liara said "I'd try to wear them, but these are too small for me."

Cara said "I am resigned to the fact that much of my life is going to be small and short jokes."

Thane said "Petite."

Liara said, looking at the shoes "Exquisite."

Liara had her own heels and she demonstrated. "You can't put your whole foot down at once. Feel the ground with the heel, and then rock your weight forward. Put some hip into it. One foot directly in front of the other."

That was exactly what Thane had told her. She had suspected that at some point Thane was going to have a pair of heels made for himself so he could demonstrate personally and shame her into developing an actual skill. Cara needn't have worried about Thane and Liara getting along. Cara tried on outfits, Liara cooed over the lines and the design. Cara was taught how to walk in heels, admonished by both of them to practice. She stayed quiet for most of the evening.

She was… definitely… wearing the heels.

She excused herself after a time and Liara stood, saying "We've been talking designers, I'm sorry, I lost track of time."

Thane smiled and Cara did as well "It's okay, enjoy your evening, I'm tired. Going to bed."

There was only one bedroom. She sighed "I didn't think of… there's one bed. I am really bad at this."

Liara said "Oh! I can… I can find a different apartment… not tonight but…"

Thane said quietly "It will not be a concern, my needs are more than met by the couch. I am accustomed to much less in the way of potential for comfort. Please do not trouble yourself and my thanks for the refuge and welcome."

Cara felt her jaw shift. He could have slept on the couch in her cabin also. He hadn't.

Liara looked slightly uncomfortable. "Maybe I should go."

Thane said "Not at all, please stay. It has been a pleasure speaking with you."

Liara was clearly relieved. They would both be happy to gracefully find their way to confidences and collusion in Cara's absence. They'd done it right in front of her. She wasn't insulted, it made her in fact smile so Liara's face looked more relieved. Thane's position as alternate host and authority was established.

Cara was going to have to learn to talk about things she didn't care about but she hadn't done well tonight. She really… really didn't care about it, and she was raw again. Still, lovely people who loved her in return, but it was too much.

She returned to a forced neutral state of lessened anxiety by focusing on simple tasks. Shower. Deep breaths.

She contacted Garrus. The inconvenient and procedurally rude time difference again was clear. He was in the middle of his day and it took him a moment, but she recognized the smaller private suite in his office where he had retreated. Probably in the middle of a meeting.

She smiled. "Hi, I love you."

He smiled. "Hi, I love you too."

"I'm on Illium, Liara and Thane are talking designers."

"Designers of what?"

"Clothes."

"That should keep them busy."

"It has."

"You're beautiful, and very tired."

"I am very tired."

"Nice try, you're still beautiful. Your eyes look like they want to close."

"Then I couldn't see yours."

"It's okay. I'll describe them for you if you want. They're blue and they adore you. Close your eyes."

She did, muscles relaxing slightly from the lack of sensory input. He said "Cara, I'll just talk, you can listen, then you can go to sleep."

"Okay."

"Someday all the distance will be gone. The fight will be over. We'll be heroes and it will be brave and all that, but let's think about that someday for a few minutes."

"Okay."

"You have the universe to choose from, where do you want to go?"

"Somewhere with you."

"That was an assumption I was counting on, but you don't know where? What about Mindoir?"

"Beautiful memories but bad memories. I can't do it."

"Do you want to visit someday at least?"

"Maybe."

"Okay. So one place down, a bunch to go. Anywhere. We shouldn't go to Palaven, the place will try to kill you. Somewhere that you can be outside. Somewhere with trees?"

"That would be lovely."

"Okay, somewhere with trees and me. What kind of trees? Chocolate trees? Milk trees?"

She smiled, warm and silly drips of his teasing voice making her feel very strongly, just as strongly as she'd felt a few hours ago, that she had not made a mistake in the least, he was the best thing that had ever happened to her, and if it came with a price, she would pay. Right now she said "No such thing as milk trees."

He sounded offended "I can do a lot of things, Cara, if I want a milk tree, I'll make it happen. How about a cake tree?"

Her smile widened "There's no such thing as cake trees."

"I'll go out every night and hang some cake from low branches, ones you can reach. Or I can lift you up so you can get to the good stuff, just a little bit higher, like four feet."

She giggled and his laugh was soft. She said "Cake tree sounds lovely. And an apple tree."

"Cake tree and apple tree and me."

"That sounds perfect."

"Yes, it does. Think about it, Cara. Don't just think about the hard stuff, think about the good stuff. We are the good stuff."

"You are the good stuff."

"Nice try, beautiful good stuff."

"The cake tree is going to be a mess. It's going to draw bugs."

"You don't have much of a fantasy life, do you?"

"No, I guess not. Not unless it involves shooting people."

"You should change that. Instead of guns sometimes, think about us sitting under a cake tree, gathering swarms of whatever bugs live there. Then it starts raining."

She laughed. She said "I have no idea how you do that. I love you, you make me happy."

"I love you, you make me happy, you're beautiful and stubborn and will need an umbrella. Go to sleep, Cara. Take moments for dreams and not plans."

"I didn't ask you what you wanted."

"I want you."

"Don't you want a tree?"

"I'll have a tree, and she grows… wait, that didn't work. Scratch that. Improv is hard sometimes."

Her smile faded to sleepy content intent to rest. "It worked. Good night, I love you."

"Good night, Cara. We'll get there. Have faith."

"I do."

For the moment, she absolutely did, warmth and love and improbable, inconvenient and very specific cake.


	35. Chapter 35

Liara brought breakfast. It was lovely and Cara determined that the trip out to Beckenstein had apparently turned into a team effort while she was sleeping. Cara now had Dr. Chakwas's help and she did not think she had nightmares, did not remember that Thane had been in her room, did not wake up with him in bed with her. She would not be willing to bet on that as a certainty considering his potential for skulk. He'd executed other plans seemingly since she could take care of herself for one night. Thane and Liara were in cahoots. Well, technically cahoots meant they were doing it secretly. They were doing it blatantly and she was high-stakes fashionista tag teamed by experts. Thane revealed the dress and it was a good thing he hadn't pulled it out at the same time as the shoes, she would have cried.

Thin panels of draped scarlet over the shoulders down to a neckline that was…

It was definitely not what she'd discussed and yanked up so many times. This was a deep V.

Oh come on, Thane. Please. PLEASE. No. She managed to not beg.

The cloth was all slink, in the same color as the shoes, fine netting connecting some panels and exposing skin, gathered at the waist and left to fall into a skirt that would only come mid thigh. It wasn't…it was terrible. It was beautiful and it was terrible. She couldn't describe how except for too short and yes, that's technically covered…but…

She looked at Thane and pleaded "I can't wear that."

Thane said with a tilt of a haughty brow ridge with an undercurrent of humor "You can and you will."

Liara said "Cara, it's beautiful. I don't think you understand…" Liara looked to Thane for support, but he was only looking at Cara, accepting her criticisms and concerns but dismissing them for already defined reasons. Liara clearly wanted him to explain how much it was worth or the designer consulted or Thane's direction in creating it. Liara was personally offended, ready to duel for the dress's honor.

There were layers to Thane's approach that Liara didn't see but Cara did, and it was again a moment of Thane theoretically colluding with Liara but if Liara wished for him to echo her argument he would not. He would ignore Liara and look at Cara, expecting her to understand, and she did. He told her the line, told her the expectation and she had enough experience by now to know to do it. He was driving only one possible conclusion with finesse and not a hammer.

It came down to this and they both knew it: He was willing to give his life, drain his bank account, subvert his own existence to serve her discovered but not expressed needs professionally and personally and do all of those things with dedication and devotion regardless of his personal wishes and needs.

Was she not willing to walk and talk in return for Kasumi's life and loyalty? Was she unable to express devotion if not to Thane, then to her bond mate, who required her public charade to protect him?

If Liara handed him a hammer he would politely put it down. If she attempted to use it, he would disarm her.

If Cara walked away at this moment over something petty like inches he demanded on a neckline, inches that Liara insisted were necessary and beautiful…the insult would be enormous. It would be unforgivable, but he would accept her choice with grace and go himself, complete the mission without her. She continued to ask for situational mercy because she knew only he could let her off the self imposed hook, but he would insist that the self imposed hook was necessary.

It was and it wasn't, and he didn't have to enjoy it so much.

Although Cara did know through osmosis and the attitudes of the people working with Thane as he designed and commissioned her clothing that it was exceptional, expensive and inspiring covetous glances, he would not mention money. He downplayed his contributions as much as possible, describing it always in terms of it being a suitable setting for her. She would wear the dress and it would enhance her. He would not accentuate the dress's importance, but it was an expression of taste and knowledge of fashion, something elegant and artistic. He overruled her attitudes as objectively inferior. Would she insist on inferior attitudes to spare herself some embarrassment when the dress should make her feel like the queen of the room?

She risked death, she risked her lives and other lives at a moment's notice, but a few inches of skin were an impossible sacrifice to make?

Liara was asking her to be worn by the dress, Thane expected her to rise to the expectation of Siha. The dress in his mind despite Liara's leanings would not be the prime player. It was very much like how he had designed the apartment and given it to her. He had created something, he had given it to her and that was all she needed to know. There would be no reimbursement and mentioning the expense would potentially give Cara another reason to balk. If he never mentioned expense or effort they could not be considered debts. He would not give her that strategic wedge.

Cara understood, but with bad grace said "It appears to be not so much interested in covering than revealing."

Thane smiled "Coverage is adequate. I would prefer less but I am aware you would not leave any room wearing it unless you were also wrapped in a blanket if that were the case."

It was a deep V.

Liara said thoughtfully "You are going to have to learn to sit in that dress."

Cara's eyes closed "And here I thought I'd mastered walking and sitting." She looked briefly to Thane, who seemed amused, convinced of the outcome where Liara was still negotiating. Thane knew it would go his way. He had gone to a great deal of trouble. Kasumi would not be in danger and that's all Cara needed to be motivated to follow Thane's lead. He seemed unconcerned about the mission itself, more interested in nail polish, a properly styled wig and arranging for full body makeup. Liara had enthusiastically supplemented the experts with more experts.

Liara said teasing "Why is it that if we were discussing mining techniques for eezo you would be rapt, but something this beautiful does not get your attention?"

Cara considered "Because I'm not going to be… uh… mined. Oh, maybe I am in that." Oh, that was bad. Don't say that again. Do not say strip mined. Don't. Change course. "I have a new concern. I will be cold. I know, I know. I won't be shot. Theoretically better. I appreciate the care and attention. I do."

That was for Liara's benefit. Thane already understood. His gaze was steady, amused and assured of the outcome, near sparkling with the slip of the reference to being mined. Cara said to Liara in order to dispel the current of power brought to bear and intimacy in Thane's gaze "Thank you for your help. I do want to get it right. I apologize if I am ungracious."

Liara said with some wry exasperation "That dress buys a lot of grace."

Cara would have said something about Liara wearing it, but the mental image would have more… coverage issues…and Cara did not want to force the room to imagine that inadvertently for a joke. She definitely didn't want to see Thane's face when he saw her walk right into that one like a puppy into a hornet's nest.

He would politely point out the hornets and suggest methods of recognition and avoidance, and he'd have more fun than should be allowed.

He considered her face with a smile and she smiled back. She was still grateful every day he was on her side. She was also more aware of potential hornets. She was also about to walk into a real nest of them like a puppy on an expensive scarlet leash.

Oh, oh. She was glad she didn't say that out loud either.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

There were hours of preparation on the day of the party because she required full… body… makeup. She had been unbelievably naïve about the process. Makeup in her mind meant 'rub something on skin' and you're done. Nope. This was not that. Thane had delivered her to a salon and only told her with a smile "This is where I leave you and where you must be brave." His voice was dripping with humor.

"You're a terrible person, Thane."

"This has been established, Lasam. You are not permitted to kill or disagree with the staff."

"Check. I can't be a terrible person. Only you."

He left her with his version of respectful, appreciative… smirk and a kiss on her brow. She felt successfully delivered to ritual sacrifice.

When they said fully body…they meant full body. Freckles and exposure and netting meant… eliminating potential makeup lines. Gaps in the fabric and shifts meant full body hair removal except for the top of her head, but that hair would be under a wig. Full body application of makeup skin tone with sealant so that it did not rub off on contact, removable later with a solvent. Some completely unbelievable 'as advertised' reassurance that it was good for the skin, nutritive and rejuvenating.

How could that possibly be true in any way? She needed to be… cured… under special lights… to set it…

She was offered alcohol, which seemed necessary to the process, but she put her tiny foot down and asked steadily but politely "Apple juice, please." Nobody's eyes bugged out and she got chilled apple juice in a lovely cut crystal goblet that made her nervous so she didn't drink it. She didn't want to explain the itemized bill, not that she'd see it:

Stripping of personal dignity: $478 credits. Overvalued in our opinion.

Goblet: $1208 credits.

Dealing with client's attitude: $4500 credits.

Changing her skin: $0. We didn't like it, we did it for free.

Thane had likely told them to give her anything she wanted unless it involved deviating from his prescribed course.

She was not going to make their job harder. She said a lot of 'yes ma'am' and 'yes sir' and continued to tell herself that she was not going to be shot. Kasumi was not going to be shot. Garrus would be safe. Women did this every day. Well, not every day, but women had done this and PAID… for this… and…

She couldn't really describe all the ways it made her uncomfortable and ready to flee. She felt them in rapid succession. Physical exposure was unpleasant but this just had a slick oily slide into the unknown and barely described or imagined. The feeling of being a thing that was being processed. The feeling of being corrected. The feeling of being standardized. The feeling of her heritage and connection to her mother stripped away. The feeling of not recognizing herself. She had always been riotously freckled and this was like seeing the ghost of her own skin, character removed.

It seemed removal of character was beauty incarnate.

As much as attendants might try to make her feel that she was being pampered, what was happening was that she was being …

Processed.

She couldn't get past it, the silent, almost monastic air of the spa, as though religious rites were taking place. She was a heretic in the halls of the sanctum of fashion and the formulas would boil on her skin like consecrated water in a font in the presence of an unbeliever. It would not work because she did not have faith.

Kasumi. Garrus.

Not me. Not Thane.

Still Thane but…

Kasumi. Garrus.

And then I never come back here, ever, and I never agree to anything like this again.

She reminded herself that this was intended to make her not look like herself on purpose, and that future settings would be more suitable. She wouldn't be a ghost.

False hair, false lashes, false nails, false everything. Before this she'd only had a few days of clothes fitting, which were an inconvenience, but bearable. She had appreciated her new clothes, although they made her careful in ways she didn't want. She was always aware of leaning on something or not leaning on something or splashing a drink or dropping food. She had been appreciative of rich fabrics and pleasing colors and forms, but he had not attempted makeup or hair style. She'd been aware of having little in the way of feminine grace, which was fine with her…she had not attempted to gather any.

Practically this would mean in order to look like this she would spend hours in a day at it. It seemed as it always had been, a waste of time and effort, time taken from study and undistracted contemplation. If she got powdered sugar on a loose cheap shirt, she would not care or notice.

Since she sat alone in her room and told people what to do, she'd always been much more concerned with convincing someone with an argument than with appearance. No, that wasn't true. She dressed her opinions very carefully as Shepard. As carefully as she was being dressed now.

Intelligence was an asset that not everyone could attain. With this much work…enough alterations, enough care to fashion, enough self denial and lack of powdered sugar…most anybody could be beautiful.

She had lied every day of her life after her rescue. She saw the hypocrisy of her attitude. She spent hours and hours and thought constructing a strategy or an argument until she was good at it on the fly. She had always assumed makeup as a process to be easier and cleaner and taking less effort. Something she really never thought about, something she was not interested in. Her mother wore none, that was good enough for her. Now the fairly wholesome if inconvenient practical art of just looking prettier than you might with a little effort became so much more insidious and costly…and powerful.

She was suddenly interested, deeply interested, in the psychology of a hidden world she had imagined to be one set of surface behaviors and then on delving in despite her resistance to the subject matter because she believed she already comprehended it…she found something else.

She saw the facile layers of involvement she'd believed to be true. There were those who took no care in appearance, then people like her that considered clean and combed to be sufficient, then those who took five minutes to apply gloss or mascara…and she'd always assumed that striation ended there, maybe people stood in front of the mirror a little bit longer or shorter. Even extending the behavior to going to salons it seemed reasonable, like a haircut in the military. She'd never been anywhere other than places that offered military haircuts. In, out, straightforward and utilitarian.

Now the practices and outcomes dipped precipitously into the realm of those who spent their lives at it, created a religion and a business model that had persisted…

She blinked, no longer seeing herself.

If the world's oldest profession was theoretically prostitution, before that came stylist.

This salon did high business for people who altered every detail about themselves to conform to symmetry and fascination.

It was a Church and as subtly textured and shaded as Mindoir, seemingly simple from the outside but complication and depth only arose with experience and immersion.

She had a razor focus now, and the ghost of her skin was an effective costume. She knew who to be and she imagined Thane's motivation in shifting perspectives. Despite her protests and concerns for herself, he knew there was a potential that she would be drawn in by the process. Cautious. Curious.

If she were ineffective he would ask her to please step out of the way and not attempt to follow in heels, remain safe and he would kill everybody there.

She would be effective. She would pay attention.

If she wanted to understand people, not as she wanted them to be, logical and ordered, she needed to see them as they were, adherent to as many strange ways of thinking or behaving as she was herself, and she was nowhere near as logical or ordered as she had always believed herself to be.

Layers were applied by acolytes of Fashion and her eyes changed from curious and tentative to fascinated by the rites and the transformation, trying not to be repelled but to be appreciative.

She could not afford to be gauche or ineffective or so distracted by personal discomfort that it kept her from doing her job.

She had a moment of joy that Garrus did not love her for her appearance as artful contouring and artifice applied by experts of steady hand and topographical possibility revealed a classically, symmetrically processed beautiful woman who wore violet contacts and had a sleek black styled bob that was impossible according to gravity.

Thane had been correct. Necklines were serious business.

She was fascinated. Not a convert, not at all, she wanted her skin back more than ever. But she was fascinated. Thane might have given her this opportunity patiently, wondering if she would really see, the same way she might have taken him on a tour of the streets of Mindoir. It was personal and it was subjective and deeply intimate, and he could not be assured that she would see that he was granting her an opportunity to tour the Master's workshop. He knew the power of artifice and could save life with it, could take life with it, could share at least some of what he knew with her in order to help her protect what she so desperately needed to protect.

She remembered him saying 'You require people like me to kill for you. There is a need, that need is rewarded handsomely. My consent led to reward, not ethical superiority.'

She imagined the branching depth of the words 'makeup' and the words 'assassin training' as though makeup were something rubbed on skin in five minutes and 'assassin training' consisted of him learning how to stab in different ways for six years before his first kill.

So she had the ethical superiority covered, didn't she? She had that and the ignorance he'd observed. He would give her the opportunity to appreciate something of value and she could take it or leave it. Liara's opinion regarding his expertise or care was irrelevant. If Cara did not care, neither would he. The evening would be over as she fussed and complained and he became disappointed, amused or impressed by her.

Guaranteed to be amused, certainly. He accomplished his mission no matter what. She either seized an opportunity or did not recognize it as such.

It would be a bit like watching her play checkers with Pon-Ifa pieces. Cara could always be counted upon to be adorable and amusing, couldn't she?

He gave her the opportunity to be drawn from helpless ignorance to educated competence.

She was not a convert to fashion, but she saw its power. She was not a convert to Shepard's persona, but she saw her power.

She would stay who she was with riotous skin and powdered sugar and a Drell who smiled either way, adorable, amused or impressed, it did not matter to him.

Except that she believed she preferred to impress him and he knew that as well.

When the layers were completed, when the perfumes and pigments and shading were all applied, she stared. She realized if she'd passed herself on the street walking in here a few hours ago she would have seen a beautiful woman. A naturally beautiful woman who spent 5, maybe 10 minutes on putting herself together like this, someone with a gift of natural beauty. She wouldn't be jealous, exactly. She had her own gifts, and she preferred her own gifts, her own skin, but she saw the power of illusion and the danger of ignorance.

It was a gift and she couldn't un-see it.

She should pay attention.

She was under the free, devoted and indulgent tutelage of a master of a craft. People had died to that craft. People had admired that craft. She had often believed he'd offered his services for free out of…what? Now it seemed terribly naïve to think that he'd decided to fight Collectors only out of the goodness of his heart.

In retrospect that seemed not only terribly but dangerously naïve and ignorant.

Now she realized she could not afford him. Nobody would be able to buy his expertise and devotion. That was a time in his life that was over. He chose his contracts and their worth and he had chosen priceless. He gave his skill and attention for his own reasons. Her attempt to determine what they were because she was suddenly inspired was the theoretical jump from 'now I know makeup takes more than 5 minutes' and considering it to be a coup of understanding would be the same as someone walking onto the CIC of the Normandy, asking to fire the gun and thinking they were the ruler of all Worlds.

She spent time thinking, but not with any expression on her new face. That altered the art intended to be shorn of character. She was aware more of her face. She remembered some of Thane's advice when she tried to speed along in her heels. 'A beautiful woman makes the worlds wait for her, Lasam. Your face often holds the expression when you move that you are focused on where you wish to go. Learn to walk as though you are someone to be. You have no destination. You are someone else's destination. The mountain will come to you or the mountain is unworthy.'

Submerged in a costume it did dictate many of her actions, restricted her movements and expressions. Her ears had been pierced and she had earrings now, platinum and ruby jewelry falls of filigree with a matching lavalier drop of pave rubies set in a sinuous rope that hung in the deep V of the dress. Now she saw the necessity for the set and the inches and his insistence.

Necklines were not only serious business, so was matching jewelry.

She chose to not sit, waited where he told her he would meet her. She had learned how to sit, how to walk, distinct and controlled movements that suited more delicate material and draping, knees together, feet not flat on the floor but feet to the side, toes down, heels up. Deliberate grace.

Now she needed to control the distractions of the swing of new jewelry and the flutter of panels and the gaps possible, maintaining newly appreciated lines and artistry that created a seamless whole that took likely hundreds of thousands of credits, his knowledge of fabric, color and the possibilities there, the assistance of salon, tailor and jeweler and allowed her entry to a gathering where her appearance alone would prove she belonged there.

He wasn't there and then he was and she wondered if he'd been watching her. She had only been there for a few minutes. He did not look like himself.

What he asked of her he had done himself. He was no longer green. Every patch of what had been green, every tiny speckle and spot that had been green was now scarlet in as many tones as his green had been and even though she had just gone through her transformation she had no idea how his was accomplished. He looked no more or less flawless than he always did, but his carriage that was so often retiring and nonthreatening around her was now overtly menacing. Goose bumps rose on already exposed skin, she felt the flush that wasn't visible now thanks to his planning.

She had been expertly painted, but he was transformed, so many small changes to his carriage, to the tension around his eyes and mouth, his center of gravity, the way he walked.

She realized 'Thane Krios' must be a set of behaviors, a set of expectations.

She realized for the first time that Thane Krios wasn't his real name.

This was a special occasion but it indicated the discipline he maintained every day, all the effort for wardrobe and speech and mannerism.

Was green his true color? Was this his true color?

Did 'true' have any meaning here and was that the question he was driving her to ask very carefully?

At his throat was what looked like a healed slash, a jagged scar across the smooth flesh of his neck and across his frill at an angle that just happened to draw the eye down to his chest, in essence his jewelry and adornment. His chest was exposed much more than usual, black and scarlet tailoring in leather and inset netting that echoed hers but with a wider weave, further scarred skin visible on his chest, abdomen and thighs.

He had stripes. Artfully framed and scarred stripes.

She had no words, ignored her gooseflesh and the shiver. She remembered what he had said to do if she felt lost.

'Smile at me as though you are planning on killing me and you have just discovered how.'

Benis Kerrat did not speak often, she recalled.

She had her script, her costume and now she needed to apply it.

She smiled at him as though she were planning on killing him and that she would make him wait for her to do it, that if he believed he were the mountain, that was no challenge. She had many a mountain waiting for the privilege of dying at her hands.

The transformation was further jarring when he opened his mouth. His voice was rougher, deeper, with a catch to it that sounded like his voice had been damaged by the injury to his throat.

"There is a word in Drell, Drala'tem, for something that once seen creates a perfect memory. A treasure that cannot be taken, valued beyond all others that were once held dear. You are Drala'tem."

She continued to smile. He took her hand and placed it on his forearm. They walked to the shuttle. She walked slowly, remembering lessons of balance and speed, and he matched her pace. They drew attention, heads turning and exclamations, whispers and dumbstruck gazes. Awe, hunger and coveting.

She wondered briefly why Liara wasn't there, and then she realized Thane likely did not extend an invitation.

The trip to Beckenstein would take only an hour and a half. With his new voice and the realization that he could be in character speaking in theory to Alison Gunn, she did not want to shatter the careful bubble by breaking her own character.

She didn't want Liara to see. She did not want to call Garrus to show him. He knew they were doing this and that she couldn't call on schedule.

She didn't want to call at all as a ghost.

This moment was of necessity shadowed, shaded, sufficient coverage but too exposed.

Benis did not wish to share his Drala'tem.

She did not wish to be displayed as something inspiring awe, hunger and coveting. Something or someone Garrus would never touch. If she could explain it she might try, but she didn't think she could.

"Thank you for loving me for character." She knew that every day and that was redundant. Painful to say "But look at all this effort made on my behalf by a man you know is in love with me and is willing to kill you for me. Isn't she lovely?"

No, she was not lovely. There was no explanation for what she was, again 0.1% and improbable, impractical and she could hear in Garrus's voice 'Can't you see…can't you see, Cara, that…'

Yes. I see.

'Turn around, right now, scrub it off and go back. It's not worth it.'

It's worth it. I need this.

She did not want that conversation at all.

Benis Kerrat did not speak and neither did Alison Gunn as she sat in the shuttle carefully, mind whirling with implications of nuance and shade. She treasured her natural character but did not want to express it in this dress, adorned in priceless, dangerous Drala'tem that would potentially save a life. She wished to save a life, not scourge a soul.

If anybody's soul was to be scourged, it would be hers and not Garrus's.

It certainly would not be Benis Kerrat's.


	36. Chapter 36

She contemplated intimidation.

There were a lot of layers to fear, but this wasn't fear.

This wasn't playing checkers with Pon-Ifa pieces, though it might have been if she were chattering away, asking about his makeup and not being intimidated, if she weren't having intimidation sealed in her bones like they had been cured under lights.

Her defensive, self-guarding behavior about the discomfort of the shoes and the meaning of too deep of a neckline fell away and she felt the proper level of vulnerable that she should have been feeling. She was out in the deep sea and she could not swim. Not on her own.

Or could she? Did he think she could with the proper inspiration?

Was that the lesson of faith? Fake it well enough and it's undetectable from the original because everyone is faking it to a certain extent, the trick is in knowing the extent? Not lying to yourself about how much you're lying, knowing the extent that others are?

She did not nervously check to see if he was still glowing or consider if he'd sell her to the highest bidder. That was not what this was about.

She was out in the deep sea, she could not swim, and her escort was not concerned in the least despite the risks, the company or the goal.

He was the most frightening thing in the sea.

He was also the mountain that had come to her.

She had a few fallback positions he'd suggested:

1\. Disdain. Be condescending, easily done through eye contact and silence. Feel free to intimidate as many people as she chose. Follow his lead with Hock himself. Hock needed to feel exceptional and in this case… curious and potentially jealous.

2\. Collusion. Look to Benis as though the conversation were a certain thing… amusing or ironic. Not enjoyable or funny. Amusing. There was a distinction. Certainly not horrifying. Look to him and he would validate her impressions, she would be part of a set and he was unassailable. Theoretically even if she killed someone there… they'd let her do it if he were at her side. Death at these things was a common occurrence. Due to Benis Kerrat's reputation and standing with the host, nobody would try to hurt him and she would be safe. Still… try not to kill anybody, it was crass. Benis had never attended with another guest and with the care taken for their appearance, matching and coordinated, they would appear an obviously paired set. Allow that to work for them.

3\. Boredom. If out of her depth, boredom was slightly different from disdain in expression. Disdain was judgment of a subject. Boredom was detachment from it. 'Look at them as though they wished to teach you to walk in heels, Lasam.'

He would not leave her side. He would not leave her alone. He would also not converse a great deal, Benis Kerrat's personality already determined. His attempts to teach her the art of criminal small talk had resulted in him illustrating again and again that she lost control over her composure and the subject matter and it was best if she did not speak.

'Enthusiasm, although charming, Lasam, will be a foreign thing unless you are speaking of a hated rival's demise.'

She had only a thin veil of functional purpose – bait and fascination. Draw Donovan Hock's attention from his guests and distractions, convince him to take them into the gallery.

She had asked "Couldn't you do that on your own?"

"With the word 'gallery' yes."

"So…faster without me. You're a terrible person, Thane."

"This has been established."

She was extraordinarily expensive ornamentation. He had gone to a great deal of effort. Kasumi wasn't even here. She did not know who was going to execute the mission. Why not just tell her that Shepard did it?

Was the answer in the word Drala'tem? Was he creating memories, images, situations he would treasure above others? Memories that involved her?

She wondered whether or not venom had more of a role in this than she thought. Expensive games in the dangerous deep were not her style at all.

But it was true she'd need to learn, because this was a field trip and the next target was preserving a council seat. More expensive. More dangerous. More at stake.

It was a terribly inconvenient time to realize that the serious business of necklines applied to many things near and dear to her, and one Turian for whom she would do anything.

She had another defense that came naturally to her and had since Mindoir. Stony silence. Extend that to ignorance of all things Drala'tem other than as something that would wash off her skin with a solvent. She would allow intimidation to soak in, that was necessary for her education in the ways of the world that did not involve being locked in her cabin with a brownie.

She was going to use abundant natural resources – feigned and genuine willful ignorance, acres and acres of endless and pure stony silence and intransigence, her homeland. Nothing intended for Alison Gunn would make its way to Cara.

She needed to discern when ignorance, disdain, collusion or boredom were required. She could avoid attraction to Thane…and even…attraction to Benis. He was…that was…

Yeah.

She would still, never, ever act on it.

She would admit to herself she wanted to touch his scars but she was not going to say that out loud. Would Alison Gunn though, and would Cara's curiosity and disconnected-from-reality impulses be sated and was that also potential Drala'tem?

So…it was the collusion that was wearing at her, the odd feeling of not wanting witnesses, as though she were truly doing something about which she should feel guilty.

She did feel guilty but could not pinpoint the exact source or whether it was coming from so many directions that it all turned into a majestic rolling guilt river along majestic palisades of 'what exactly did you think was going to happen?'

Was it knowing how it would make Garrus feel if she disclosed everything?

Was it that she expected to be trusted, and she should not have to disclose anything?

Both?

Was it about trust or the potential gap between perceived motive and actual motive?

What was her actual motive?

That came to her immediately in all the indulgences and given inches. Keep Thane happy.

All right then. Keep everyone happy with ignorance, disdain, collusion and boredom.

Kasumi will be safe.

Garrus will be safe.

Thane will be…

Thane will be Thane and I cannot predict what that will be, obviously. I can hope to rise to inspiration. That's what I do.

She contemplated, deciding that feeling like a ghost whose bones had frozen would be helpful to the charade. When they arrived he stood, but she remained seated, turned her head to him, appropriately ghostly cool.

He didn't exactly smile, but his features flowed into a different face, possessive, menacing and yes… she wanted to touch the scars and see how his face did that.

She was jealous of Alison Gunn for a moment, her access to fascination and exploitation of broken symmetry.

He extended his hand to her and she took it. He pulled her up and tucked her hand on his forearm and they had arrived for their field trip.

She was cold, her feet hurt, she was trying not to sweat, though she had no idea how to keep from sweating, it just felt like one of the unreasonable skills she should have developed in all this preparation.

Hock came out to the security checkpoint before entry to greet them. Well… to greet Benis. Obviously Benis.

She felt the need to not sweat again when Benis Kerrat's name for Donovan Hock was 'Nova in a rough purr.

Okay, so she wasn't always on top of things like this… but… that was…

That was how Garrus sounded when…

Don't bring him here, lock that down, shut that out, right now.

She wanted to run to the shuttle but didn't, suddenly realizing she was not really the bait as she'd thought. She was…

She was competition.

He'd said it, he had, looking back she should have realized. Benis was intimate and frightening and Hock was slightly offended, barely able to tear his eyes from Benis, but doing so because he couldn't help it.

"And who is this?" Not welcoming, not exactly. Not at all, really.

"This is Alison Gunn. She aspires to be your competition some day."

Hock laughed at the facetious tone and out of defense "Come to steal my business, has she?"

She smiled and said "Among other things."

Hock's gaze at her was more appraising, less dismissive, and Benis was amused without a smile. Humor had a different polarity here, flowed a different way, the laughter and the lips twisted and the eyes cold.

Hock said "Well, you are both welcome, it is good to see you, Benis, you have been missed."

Benis replied "I'm sorry to disappoint the hopeful if they believed I was dead."

Hock shrugged and said "Without your body, I would not believe it."

More rough purr "And with my body?"

Hock answered "That is a celebration on its own. Please, welcome inside, and it is a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Gunn. You will have no better tour guide."

She inclined her head, smiled and said nothing.

Benis said to Alison confidentially "He is being modest. His tours are extraordinary, but I am happy to show you the ropes."

Hock's eyebrows rose "Ropes then? I look forward to it. Shall I see you upstairs?"

"Perhaps."

Security had some questions about Alison's unusual hardware, but Hock waved them in. "I wouldn't want her to think I was afraid of her, now would I? They are welcome. My authority."

Benis smirked "Thank you, 'Nova."

Hock inclined his head in a cool nod and was into the house ahead of them.

She could talk to him, softly, she knew, and there was no monitoring permitted at these gatherings, too many paranoid people willing to kill, suppression of technology required because they of course did not trust each other.

She asked "Ropes? Upstairs? What's upstairs?"

Benis replied "You do not wish to know what is upstairs, and we will not be going."

She scoffed slightly, disdain fully in bounds "You can't even tell me?"

He answered "I could, but if I did, the mission would no longer be the targeted, easily acquired item you hoped to achieve. You would have to kill everyone here. If you wish to see upstairs and subsequently kill everyone here, we must arrange for another outing, one with a stronger offense."

She had asked about maybe having the party raided, but there was no point. These were criminals, yes, but none would come here if there were outstanding warrants on them, that was part of the tacit deal of safety. Authorities could suspect all they wanted, but camping outside the doorstep would yield them nobody… or nobody who looked like anybody… who was wanted enough to have charges drawn. Guaranteed that each person inside was a 'person of interest' or under investigation, but security of the estate and the intentionally obstructionist rogue planet itself where 'extradition' did not exist as a concept made access difficult. The policy of the planet to foreign invasion was exactly that – invasion. Attempt to land with a C-Sec squad and suddenly the Citadel would be at very complicated and costly war with a planet that harbored arms dealers routinely.

These criminals were best caught outside bounds of Beckenstein for very complicated constitutional and criminal reasons and everyone knew it.

She smiled at him and patted his arm "Don't sell yourself short, Benis. I'm certain you can arrange for any amount of required offense."

"And you could arrange for the rest."

"So you're really not telling me?"

"Absolutely not."

"I will take your word for it."

"It is always best to do so." Smug dripped from the scarred rough of his words.

There was limited mingling, but most people did not approach them, only stared. Benis managed to shut people out with body language or real language, brought her to stand before some of the displayed art.

She said confidentially "It's not going to work. I'm not going to be curious. I'm never doing this again."

He turned and looked at her, away from considering something worthy of collecting "I could arrange for him to steal something else. Your hot chocolate mug perhaps?"

She scoffed again "Now you go too far, sir."

"There is a gathering every month, I have a standing invitation."

"I will give you leave to return as you wish."

"I can arrange one for you."

"I find myself occupied."

"Not with hot chocolate, alas."

"Someone will get me a mug."

"Then that one will go missing, I am afraid. These are dedicated criminals. They always get their mug."

The image of Thane removing every mug from the Normandy in order to tease her, having a pile of mugs like a dragon's hoard in his quarters and putting his latest prize on top of it with a satisfied smirk made it very hard for her to not laugh. The warm slide of humor turned into a clear and joyous laugh before it was cut off abruptly by her realizing she should not be doing that.

He backed her up against the most convenient wall, his head tipped close to hers and a hand beside her head, leaning in and down.

She looked up at him "I'm sorry, shouldn't have done that."

"Then I should not have provoked it, but I did, and it had the effect I hoped. You make excellent bait, Drala'tem." He moved closer, definitely close enough to look like he had her fully pushed back, but still with some distance between them…as long as she did not breathe, which was not a viable plan. Shock and weakness flooded through her, and she heard his voice near her ear "Close your eyes. Turn your head to the side, away from me."

His lips didn't touch her skin, but his breath and voice moved along the lines of intended caress. He murmured "Lift your thigh, slide it along the outside of my thigh."

She did it, heart pounding and breath scarce, head tilted back with her closed eyes and his mouth at her throat close enough to feel the warmth from his skin and his breath. His hand splayed as he held the outside of her thigh, pressed to the outside of his, net and scar and leather.

He breathed at her throat, the scarlet fake nails of his hand digging into pale ghost skin, and she did her best to stand up, not squeak, not tremble, though the trembling won.

He tugged on her earring with his teeth and then abruptly let her go, drew a fingertip down the side of her face and jaw line after a long gaze, then took her hand again, put it on his forearm, and moved to the next piece of art.

She steadied her breath before saying "You had a little bit too much fun there, Benis."

He smiled "And I see it as not enough. You need practice in front of an audience. You are getting better."

She sighed "I believe I have a good teacher."

He said, mock irritated "Good?"

She said quietly "You held me up so I wouldn't fall over. That was good."

This time he laughed, still twisted and turned and rough, but recognizable as humor and not amusement.

They drew attention but nobody approached as he guided her from item to item, with his explanations of the nature of the art and the acquisition, its relative merits and then his hand at the small of her back or brushing back a strand of hair.

Seeing Donovan Hock grow steadily more jealous and offended made her ask "You and Hock were lovers?"

"He does something with his tongue… I should not elaborate."

"Oh… you are… so mean. I want to know what the thing with the tongue is now."

"I cannot in good conscience show you. Perhaps I can explain it to the Councilor and he can describe it to you, but I am certain it would also qualify as a little bit too much fun."

"You are a terrible person."

"This has been established, Drala'tem."

She was however, perfectly safe, she realized and relaxed. His casual hands on her were intimate but not invasive, serving the dual purpose of his idea of fun and, his idea of how to get a job done.

Donovan Hock slowly came to the frustrated conclusion that he would have to take a direct approach, having gone upstairs and then returned. He strode toward them purposely, saying "I am bereft to see the two most beautiful guests not taking advantage of the opportunity to be seen."

Ropes… being seen… Sex upstairs. Sex in a way that would make her want to kill everyone here. She clamped down on those images and thoughts and kept her gaze straight.

Benis said "There is insufficient inspiration upstairs, perhaps something more private. Perhaps the gallery? If you would join us? It would be an incomplete tour without that, and I… and she… would be grateful for the opportunity." Benis's hand trailed down her throat and she curled into it, looking at Donovan Hock as though she wished to kill him.

Hock blinked and said "But of course. I have been an unforgivably rude host, please forgive me. This way." It took him a moment to tear his eyes from Benis and then a surprised moment where he had trouble tearing his eyes from Alison's.

They followed him down, Donovan ahead and her with her heel-paced patience. She did not lean on him.

The vault…should have been impressive, but everything in here to her was dead and disconnected, the information that there were people upstairs, likely slaves…

Likely slaves.

She had no interest in exclusive treasures that belonged in museums. She was no longer intimidated or concerned for her performance.

Benis did let go of her, did leave her side, left her to choose whether to watch Benis or the stolen treasures. Benis leaned over to kiss 'Nova and she did watch and did not look away. It took only about two minutes of venom-laced caresses and moans from 'Nova before Benis drew back and said "'Nova, you have a graybox from a gentleman named Keiji? Where is it?"

Hock pointed. Sitting on the side of one of the display cases.

Benis continued "Thank you. Have you decrypted it?"

Hock said "No. Can't crack it. Tried." His accent was gone, his voice softer.

Benis said "Good. Get it for me, bring it to me."

Hock did that, handed it over.

Benis reached for Hock's throat, pulled him closer, Benis's brow to 'Nova's forehead and said "You know you cannot crack it. You gave it to me because I offered to crack it for you. You will not remember when. You will not look for it again. You will know that I have promised to crack it for you. You believe me. If it occurs to you to wonder when you will see me, I will not be available for the next gathering, but you know I will get it to you by the second gathering wherever you are in time. You will always be only at most two months from being assured of your prize and you will not worry. You will only remember Alison Gunn when someone mentions her appearance, but you will not seek her out. You will remember only that I came here to see you, I missed you, and I proved it to you here. You will not alert security toward the graybox ever again, you will never mention it, you will only remember that you want me, I will return to you, and you will have what you need from my hand. Wait here for half an hour, return to your guests, do not look for me, I have gone. Do not mention me, the graybox or Alison Gunn to any other."

Hock nodded dully.

Benis turned and met her eyes, as though asking her if she wanted him to kill instead, hand still on Donovan Hock's throat.

She did not nod or shake her head, he already knew the answer. She wouldn't. Not in cold blood, not even if the man deserved it. It was the mission that mattered and they had what they came for.

Instead she walked to him, took his hand from Hock's throat and placed it on her forearm and they walked out at her pace.

They didn't speak on the return, her thoughts no less intimidated than they had been on the way in.

She could not think of anything to say that was not trite, or facile or playing checkers with Pon-Ifa pieces. She did not want to define it or label it. She did not wish to break a knowing and unknown silence.

He escorted her again to the salon, where she would have the experience washed from her skin but not her bones.

She would not be going back. She would not see Benis again. She had another mission. He would take the graybox to Kasumi and then begin his own process of reversal of whatever it was he had experienced.

He stood, looking down at her, both still wordless. She had thanked him, she had called him a terrible person, she had been shocked, she had made him laugh, she would need to guard her mugs…

She leaned up and kissed at the scar on his throat, whispered 'thank you' and then took her painted self back into the salon, still not a believer, but witness to strange miracles that defied death and simultaneously promised it.


	37. Chapter 37

She had a long episode of trembling she could not control about half an hour into the process of being stripped of Alison Gunn. She trembled and the attendants assumed she was cold, wrapped her in a robe.

She knew the trembling and then inevitable shaking was set off by the subject of slavery, the context and the helplessness, sustained by the fact that it was all wrapped up in overwhelming and exhausting significance. Now all her adrenaline and purpose was gone and this was what was left, a physical residue along with dull exhaustion, wishing it would end. She couldn't make it stop. She just had to ride it out.

She stared as they fussed and pressed something warm into her hand to drink, which she put down. They didn't try again.

She had ended a lot of slavers. Not all of them. There were always more. It was cleaner to fight Reapers somehow. Both she and the slavers could agree the Reapers needed to end…but she always felt that hollow loss at the subject, that space in her filled with smoke and screams. The pressure built up inside her and reminders would make the tremors and then the shaking start. Now her defenses collapsed and this rolled out of her. She was out of danger. She was no longer on a stage… or not a stage that mattered. Nobody here cared about her or her reactions; she was a client. She was as alone as she could manage and she wanted to walk out of here with the processing that belonged to full-body shaking done.

It was unpredictable when this was going to happen. The risks were higher when she was… exactly like she was now. Helpless. Vulnerable. Aware she had turned a blind eye to slavery and left people to suffer because she had a mission.

She never did this during a fight, but it could and did happen after, long after and sometimes not at all, unpredictable in what triggered it, but it was a recurrent cycle, a need to throw it off like poison that attacked the head and the heart and the soul. Sometimes the subject wasn't slavery directly but torture, pain and all the sets of misery that blended into the result of suffering caused by the sentient to the sentient. It could happen after a meeting with the Council, watching their cagey insistence on doing nothing in order to avoid exposing themselves to potential criticism.

She excused herself quietly and went to the palatial restroom, locked the door, turned off the light, slid to the floor and began to shake without trying to suppress it. She didn't cry. She felt helpless. She wanted her skin back. She imagined the pain she had ignored, just up one flight of steps. She multiplied that pain happening in homes and houses, unseen. It hit her again as it had so many times that her mission kept her from rescuing people because they were 'lower priority.' Just like Mindoir on the patrol list. People suffering now would die before the Reapers landed, tortured to death, treated like cattle, abused, raped, replaced… so endemic and unstoppable that she had moved on. She had abandoned them.

That was… only… one… house. Suffering was everywhere and she couldn't stop it and if she killed the Reapers the surviving slavers could continue without interruption of the business of suffering and torture.

Her mission meant nothing to people like her parents. That wasn't exactly true and they were with her suddenly and reassuring…

To people like you, not to you.

Silence.

She dry heaved a little. She'd had no food or drink for hours, she still had no appetite, just the instinct to throw it off, get it out. But it would always be inside. It wasn't coming out.

She had learned at least something from Thane. She wasn't ashamed of locking herself in here. She didn't worry about the inconvenience she caused to people who would shrug and charge more. For once she didn't begrudge the expense, worth it to her, thankful to Thane for covering for the effect as well as the aftermath. She let them wait for her while she set her own pace. She left her sanctuary when she was able to speak again and the shaking had stopped.

She was effectively stripped. She was numb to this process as she hadn't been to the original transformation, retreating in exhaustion, but she was alert enough to balk when it appeared she was back to herself as much as possible and they began to reapply makeup.

She held up a hand and said "Wait… I don't… don't do that."

"We wished to…"

She worked up a baby glare. It was trying hard. It had no effect.

An attendant said reasonably as though to a small child who matched that level of proto-glare "The service is finished, but we cannot… allow you to leave looking like… that."

Oh. Right. She was bad for business looking like herself. All… that… character… left... unprocessed. They couldn't stand it. They also thought they were being kind to her, she realized. Of course she would not want to leave the houses of the holy without a final blessing, alms for a beggar. They also could not allow her to leave looking like a heretic, unconverted to their ways. She sighed "Get me a cloak and a mask."

"But we can…"

"Please, get me a cloak and a mask. I need to go. Thank you for the offer, but I really need to go and it can't wait."

She was given a cloak and a mask and she went straight to the apartment, into the shower to get even the scent of the place, the chemical residue on her skin just from the air there off of her body and out of her hair and her nose, a newly despised flavor of smoke.

She was exhausted and wrung out but she wanted to talk to Garrus, stronger than the dulled potential thirst or hunger or smoke of the day.

Choosing what to wear to bed had never been an issue and now she realized that she had no remaining comfortable oversized anything.

Now she had exquisitely beautiful, soft and still covering all of her skin things to sleep in, but she was still irritated at not being able to find… she rifled through her luggage for a moment and then sent Thane a text question.

"Did you throw away my real clothes?"

"They were not real clothes. They were abominations."

"Did you throw away my abominations?"

"Yes."

"Stop doing that."

"Stop wearing abominations."

"Stop sneaking in while I'm sleeping."

"That is conjecture, Lasam. You have no idea when I snuck in."

"Give me back my clothes."

"Absolutely not. I have standards. Now you have standards."

"I prefer abominations."

"Obviously."

"Thank you for lovely clothes."

"You are welcome."

"Don't take anything else."

"We shall see."

"I'm not a project, Thane."

"Of course you are. Sleep well."

She heard 'you're a terrible person' and 'that has been established' in her head, now a ritual call and response. She typed in instead: "Sleep well."

She was smiling because now in her imagination there was a theoretical pile of her clothes next to the pyramid of mugs in his quarters. Wait, scratch that. He'd burn them. No evidence remaining. She had a set of peach pajamas in some fabric she could not identify, but it was lovely, close to silk. Likely of Drell origin, but she didn't remember the name. They shouldn't be called pajamas, probably loungewear. They were very comfortable, long sleeves, no neckline other than a slight scoop, and she counted her relative blessings. As a small act of rebellion she was going to refer to them as 'jammies' and darned be the consequences.

She flopped on the bed on her stomach and dragged a pillow under her chin, set her Omni Tool where she could see and called Garrus.

He was at home and he answered with a teasing smile "Red looks good on you."

She laughed and asked "Liara?"

"Oh yeah, she wasn't invited to see, but that doesn't stop a Shadow Broker."

"Auuugh."

"Did you hate it? I bet you hated it."

"I did. Bless you for knowing that."

"I hate all the tailors and… fringe fashion…"

"What's fringe fashion?"

"They apparently should be sharper."

"No, they shouldn't."

"That's what I keep telling them when they come near me with a rasp. Not only do they need to be sharpened, but then…artificially worn to look natural. No. All of it, just no. Mission went well?"

"Yup. Walked in and out, didn't have to shoot anybody. Wanted to. Couldn't stop people who kept slaves." She swallowed, but the trembling was gone and she was safe for a while. She hadn't had an episode in front of Garrus but he knew it happened.

His subharmonic hum was low and comforting and he said "You couldn't save everybody."

"I couldn't save everybody."

"I know you're okay, you're going to be okay, but do you want to talk about it?"

"I don't know. Slavery, perceived beauty… relative sharpness… so much going on and I'm tired and pretty sure I can't think straight. I'm just glad… I mean, for a strange reason or not a strange reason, I'm just glad I didn't know that your fringe was supposed to be sharper and you know that having my freckles gone would make me miserable. I want your fringe the way it is because it's yours. I never asked… are you considered a terribly attractive Turian in popular opinion?"

He laughed and then said "Well, just as with that red dress… it's kinda hard to separate out the name "Vakarian" and my status or the fact that I've never sharpened my fringe and I'm a rebel… but yeah. I'm an attractive Turian. Even more so with Councilor attached."

"Then I hope it makes you happy that you glowed and I don't care about that. Or maybe I should appreciate it more? Should I care about that? Do you… do you spend a lot of time and effort on being perceived as a casually attractive, unsharpened Turian?"

"Much more than I used to, but there's always been a habit of preparation in my life. My mother and father expected me to exceed certain standards that progressed from clean to organized to tailored. Then there was the military and we spent hours on shine and straight and passing inspection. C-Sec, same thing, public image and public face being the best. Then as Councilor it went into a whole new area. I have social secretaries and designers and fittings and I don't like them but I know they're necessary. I don't let them rasp me though."

She said softly, faintly "I let them rasp me today. I got rasped…hard. I got rasped places… I don't even know."

He laughed and then said "That sounds… wrong… and you know it."

She smiled "Yeah. I never, ever want to do that again. Kasumi's item is safe though and her plan would have… I wouldn't have done it or I would have failed. So it was necessary, if… overboard. And now I have more practice."

"Do you feel beautiful as a person? Do other humans find you attractive?"

"No, not really. I mean, yeah… Wait. Two separate questions. I don't think people in general find me beautiful. I don't try to look beautiful. But beauty in this case… it's about my perspective. I look like my mom, she was beautiful, therefore… I'm beautiful. But she was beautiful… in context. To me. I love that that's how you feel about me. I'm beautiful because… I'm me. That's priceless. I don't need or want anything else. You were raised to attract attention and you had status… but I've spent my life trying to jettison attention. Obviously… I could be prettier, or I could be more classically beautiful, this has been proven. But… I've spent so much time trying to not attract attention, how do I know how many people might find me attractive? I never give them the chance to say so if I can help it and I ignore them if they do it anyway."

"That… I have noticed." 

"So I have a willful ignorance there, I don't want to know. It's not fair for me to say 'no, people don't find me attractive' because there's an obviously symmetrical, highly processed Drell who does not seem to care. Well, he cares. I think he just wants the best available for me, for himself, and the best means a lot of work I'm not interested in. He said something, and half the time I know he's just teasing, but he said something and it seemed to work. He said I have a look where I've just figured out how to kill someone. That I should ask you what effect it had on you. He's probably messing with me, but is that true?"

"Oh yeah. That look is effective."

"So… if it's about my eyes when I'm thinking and not my eyes when they're just… my eyes… then it is about beauty being expressed through action with me. I'm not insulted. I don't feel like I am missing anything. I'm not interested. Thane's probably disappointed but too bad. I like me. I like that I can be beautiful through expression when I'm not trying to be beautiful. I like that I don't need to look like I can get results, but I can still get results. Though I suppose I lie about that. It kind of goes around and around as a subject, but does that make sense?"

"Yes. I think so. So, you think you have potential and kinetic beauty, not passive beauty?"

"Yeah. Seeing beautiful people, being one, it doesn't make me want to do it again, it makes me want to… well, it makes me want to hide in my room and read a book. Only this time definitively, with attitude."

"You've been doing that all along."

"Yeah, so I'm unchanged. Powerful experience… educational, not one I want to repeat. Like learning how to use guns. Powerful experience… educational, but holding a gun doesn't make me feel more powerful and looking beautiful doesn't either. I prefer my intelligence as a source of power. It's solid, not as unpredictable, not as destructive, and I enjoy the process of gaining and expressing that power more than I do with a gun or with a smile. It's like learning to be a snake charmer. That thing could kill me, how 'bout I do it without the snake?"

"Thane's the snake?"

She laughed "Yeah, I guess so. He'd agree. I'm just stubborn and opinionated, too accustomed to one way of expressing myself. Why invest in something that is not a sure thing?"

"So what was the point of going to all that trouble?"

"Well…just going out to dinner as myself is gonna be easier. If I can keep my cool, and I did, in criminal company where I was extremely uncomfortable with my surroundings and my attire, I should be able to convince reporters that I'm comfortable when I'm only… sort of uncomfortable with my surroundings and attire. Something I also don't want to do, but I'm not giving time with you up. I need to protect what we have."

"For anybody paying attention, you're beautiful potentially, kinetically and passively and I'm… this is going to sound terrible, but here we go. I'm looking forward to the actual Reaper invasion so I can get my priorities aligned. Then we're in the fight, fully in the fight, no need for courting reporters. No more snake charming. I've thought about it. I can be a Councilor from the Normandy."

"You WHAT?"

"I know you've got the immediate fight in front of you, but I'm thinking about the long run, Limayeth. If next week we're the next story on the front page, if Turians watched you take down a Collector Ship, the Hierarchy watched you hand it over to them so they could save half a million people… if anybody is left that won't support you, if anybody believes we won't work well together or won't protect Turian interests, I'm not wasting time and effort on them. They should have all the proof they need by now. If someone finds out tomorrow that I am bonded to you, I am not ashamed of that. I'm not going to hide it. I'll agree to stay Councilor if it's possible, I promise you… but if all your precautions and high heeled plans don't work out, I'm not backing down on protecting Palaven or fighting with you. Once Reapers hit, every priority is going to change, and it will shift from preparation to execution. I'm going to suggest the Council moves to the Normandy to protect them. You have the only stealth drive, you will be directly in the fight. If the Reapers hit you KNOW we should evacuate the Citadel… They might hit the Citadel first, I don't know. Wherever they hit first, they hit, and we don't have anything left to prove."

She rapidly absorbed a lot of that without really understanding the implications, echoing back "So you think… we reach a point in the fight where… it's just fight and allocating the fight and there's no more… selling the fight?"

"Yes. Yes, I think that is going to happen, needs to happen. WHEN…not if, Limayeth, but when that happens, I'm taking the berth on the Normandy that you promised me. It's going to be our berth. I'm going to be there with you, and I'm going to shoot things. No more high heels, no more desk. We both get some of what we want as a side effect of everything else going straight to hell."

"What? You want me to put the Turian Councilor at risk…?"

"Every… Turian will be at risk Limayeth. Trust me that as part of Turian culture I'll need to show that I'm just as willing to fight in the front lines, eager in fact, as I was with Saren. Any Turian… who does not support that in a time of all out invasion, who would try to tell me I should not have you as a bond mate, that will not be the sort of person I should be listening to. If Palaven no longer wants me supporting them, that is their loss. I am willing to maintain the Councilorship and coordinate the war effort, but I will do it as your bond mate and I will do it from the Normandy… or whatever other ship you steal from Reapers. Wherever you go, I go with you. When that day comes, Limayeth, we have done all we can to convince people of our competence and dedication, and if they don't see it, it's because they don't want to see it and we should not waste our time on them. The rest is execution. On that day I listen to you, you listen to me, we do it together."

She said quietly, "Oh."

He waited quietly. He then said tentatively "You're not arguing."

She thought. Her intellect often felt like water seeping into cracks of logic. She then would have to identify the cracks and put those concepts into words, but right now his argument felt…smooth… impenetrable. Even exhausted she should have been able to feel the gravity of potential argument, but right now she said slowly "I… I don't think I can."

"I don't think I believe you."

"My brain is not at its best, but… yours is."

"Wait, really?"

"Yeah. Day had to come, huh?"

"So I was smart?"

She smiled at him "Yeah."

"Finally. So you're going to be reasonable?"

"Looks that way. If reasonable means… putting you at risk. You're not going on every mission, by the way, I'm still the Commander and if you're back on my ship, you're not telling me what to do."

He grinned and said "Oh come on, you're taking me every time. You always did."

She ran her fingertips over the mark on his crest "Yeah. I always did." She really didn't want to argue, wanted to think but right now she didn't have a real argument he hadn't already addressed. She shook her head to clear it and said "Okay, no more revelations. Can you… tell me how your day went instead?"

"How my day went?"

"Yeah, I don't have surveillance on you. I can't find out such things unless you tell me."

"I had… meetings."

"Boring meetings?"

"Well, think about it. Your job is mostly sitting around studying, maybe checking inventory. You have long periods of preparation and short bursts of activity. I just have… long periods of preparation. So right now you don't want to talk about your day because it was too exciting and I don't want to talk about mine because it was… really boring."

"Don't you have exciting moments?" 

"Yes. Mostly not in these sort of meetings though. Mostly when all of those meetings results in an action taken. Same principle. A new law goes through. A facility opens that helps people."

"Slavers get shut down."

"Slavers get shut down, yeah. Those are good days. Worth it days. It's all worth it. Maybe irritating."

"Like high heels."

"I wouldn't know."

"Pray you don't ever have to find out."

"Oh! I did find out about the Kepral's program. There is one. Salarian run, according to them, a great deal more comprehensive and effective than anything the Hanar are developing. They've had some success with lung transplants, synthetic lungs and other therapies."

"That's…that's fantastic. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"I need to talk to Kolyat. I've told Thane that I want him to leave if we survive the Collector mission, to spend time with Kolyat. I want him in that study."

"So the snake charmer already has an expiration date?"

"Yeah, that was… it was part of the deal of me taking the apartment. He knows he's dying, I wanted him to go immediately… negotiated terms."

"He's got a spot whenever you manage to get him there. Think you can convince him?"

"Yeah… yeah I do. He won't like it. Not even a little."

"Just like you didn't like having freckles removed."

"Right. Not even a little."

"And you're still going to do it."

"Absolutely."

"Best day ever. So plans are firming up. Snake charmer charmed, me on the ship, after we win we establish a place with no high heels and no fringe sharpeners."

"No slave traders."

"Yeah, I'm allowed to shoot things then."

"I'm allowed to not shoot things."

"That's it? Really? You're just going to stop, with all the injustice and everything still happening?"

"Yup, I am just going to stop. Thane has something to say about that though, that if I see suffering I'm going to be 'drawn from helplessness to incompetence' and I think that's also what was today was about. Put me in a circumstance where I will only jump one way. Maybe I won't watch the news. Can we go somewhere that I can indulge in the luxury of not watching the news?"

"Absolutely. No news. Did you think about kids?"

"I thought about you thinking about kids."

"And what do you think about me thinking about kids?"

"I have…no idea. I haven't really thought of me as 'mom' material. You have?"

"Definitely."

"Turian or human?"

"Both, either."

"Is this a Turian nesting thing?"

He drawled in slight mocking offense "We don't build nests, Limayeth."

She laughed and said "Metaphorically."

"Metaphorically…yeah. Family means you and family means kids."

"Then… yeah. I teach 'em how to bake and you teach 'em how to shoot."

"You're going to have to figure out how to bake for Turians."

"I teach them how to bake and grill. You sure it's okay you're not on Palaven?"

"It's okay. If you're done, I'm done. The rest of the family can come visit us. You need trees."

"I need trees. I need no news. I need you."

"One step at a time. We'll make it, Limayeth. Now when do I get to see you again?"

She smiled "Good night, Garrus."

"Oh come on…!"

"Good night, Garrus."

She signed off, grinning.


	38. Chapter 38

Cara absorbed powerful experiences and regained some balance, in theory with more stability, or at least with more education. The aftermath of bonding chemistry was managed. She had her appetite back and felt her mind reassert herself, thankfully, as though she had had broken wings that had healed. She'd mourned their loss, then when they were strong enough again she could feel the lift of the wind under them, ever precious but now longed for and regained.

She needed to get in touch with her crew, she needed to set her next mission and she realized… she realized she had never informed Tali'Zorah that she was alive again. Instead of continuing to hide and hoping to die before admitting that, she requested Tali's contact frequency from the Admiralty Board. She heard back in eight hours.

Tali sounded happy "Shepard! I saw what you did with the Collector Ship! It's great to see you. Are you well?"

"I am, Tali, thank you. I'm sorry I didn't get in touch earlier."

"That's okay. I imagine you've been very busy!"

"I have. Are you well?"

"I'm an Admiral now!"

"Congratulations!"

"Thank you. Garrus helped. He helped a lot. He coordinated with me as a representative for the Flotilla. That led to my Admiralty and a better relationship with Council races, more legitimacy. My father and I have been working on the technical aspects of the indoctrination issue, scanning and detection methods. Quarians for once seem to have our isolation working for us. Difficult to breech suits to indoctrinate us, difficult to infiltrate the ships."

"Are you happy?"

"I am. I am working with my father."

Cara smiled "Tali, I'm so happy for you."

Tali said solemnly "Thank you so much. I had a better few years than you did."

Cara laughed a little "Yeah, but you got a lot more done. I'm a bit behind here. I need to catch up."

Tali said hesitantly "I'd ask if you need help, but I know you do, and I know I can't. I'm needed here."

Cara shook her head and said "You're already doing the best you can from the best place, Tali. I'm so happy for you. I'm sorry I didn't get in touch sooner."

Tali said "Garrus told me he's been keeping you busy."

Cara grinned "That he has."

Tali answered "So you don't have anybody from the original crew except for Kaidan, huh?"

Cara nodded "Yes, but I've got a great crew. Seems all my original crew became absolutely indispensible where they were, stayed in the fight and did everything they could. Kaidan did amazing work in the Alliance, they just loaned him back to me. I know I don't have a right to it…but I am so proud of you. I'm so proud to be able to say – stay where you are, Tali. Your people need you."

"They do, and I need them."

"Hey, I have a question. Well, more of a confession I guess. It might be part of why it took me so long to talk to you. I always… well… I always worried about taking you out on a mission, and I didn't want to do it because I didn't want to get you sick. Is that… is that racist?"

Tali was quiet for a moment and then said "I… no, I don't think that's racist. Back then it was about what we had to do. Now it seems you have more time and support, and I want to be that support still, and even if it is painful to admit, I don't have the immune system for the front lines…if there's a choice. Now you have Council support, Alliance support, even Spectre support, you have better options, more options. Even then … well you still took me out… even though you didn't need to. You made me feel useful, I was proud. You're a better hacker than I am."

"What? No way. You hacked a GUN on the Citadel on our way to Saren. A GUN! A huge turret that could have, would have torn us to shreds, but instead you turned it on them!"

Tali laughed "Yeah, yeah I did. That was… terrifying and wonderful. But yes, very dangerous and it's just realistic that I'd be at more risk. I'm trying to be… well, I have a lot more to live for now, my people need me here, and I'm not as ready to take that risk as I was before. I will tell you, Shepard, that being in your crew changed my life for the better, Garrus being a Councilor changed the galaxy for the better, and I consider myself living proof of that. I know he wouldn't have been if it weren't for you. I know that he, that we all, kept you alive as much as we could every day when you weren't."

"I wish I had talked to you more. I wanted to, I really wanted to, I didn't want to pester you."

Tali said softly "I… I had no idea."

"I'm sorry about that too. I didn't want to die… you know, again… without telling you how much your help meant to me, how I couldn't have gotten it done without you, and how now I hope you are somewhere safe doing your thing… and happy… that is great news. I don't want to risk that, and I know you would… but please don't. I'm afraid… I'm afraid I really like you, Tali. You're the sort of person I always wanted to protect. Whether or not you want me to, I do. I hope you want me to. I hope you take it as an inspired compliment on your character and not a condemnation of your constitution."

"I will. Thank you, Shepard."

"I know I can't haul across the galaxy, but I wish I could, I wish I could see you, and I wish I could… I should have given you a hug before you left. I thought it would be… intrusive."

Tali said "It would have been wonderful. Good luck on your mission, Shepard. Please, don't die. Please stay in touch. Please find your way. I know that from every one of us that have become indispensible, we owe it to you."

"And I know I'm only alive because my team made me look so good."

"We're still your team."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

She would really rather chew on eezo shards, but she decided to again be a grown up and go speak to Russ. She waited until evening and knocked softly on his cabin door. He opened it, looked at her impassively and gestured her in.

She sat at the edge of a chair that was too big for her and said softly "I haven't spoken to you a great deal. Just to make it clear, EDI is aware of my relationship with Garrus, my relationship with Thane. I trust her and I believe she will not tell anybody anything. I don't want to pressure you to speak to me here. That's your call entirely. We can meet off the ship if you want."

Russ gritted his teeth for a moment and then said "No, go ahead. I imagine if EDI wanted us dead or your circumstances…anybody on the ship's circumstances to be public knowledge, we'd be dead already and there'd be videos circulating of me in my shower."

Cara laughed and said "Well, that probably is the most interesting thing happening…"

Russ smiled but it didn't meet his eyes.

She said quietly "I wanted… I wanted to apologize for the position you were put in and the part I played in that. I didn't know but that isn't an excuse. I'm afraid interpersonal relationships have not been… anything approaching what should be expected from a Spectre and a commanding officer. I wanted to make sure, really sure…that you still want to be here. I…uh…well, I know it's hard to tell Garrus no. But you can tell me no, and I can relay it."

Russ sounded amused "Now I sound like my interpersonal relationships are not approaching what should be expected from a Spectre."

"Well… yeah, I'm not sure how to get this across without potentially adding insult to injury. You're an extraordinary crew member, the Ferox is an extraordinary asset, and I… I think you've done enough if you think you've done enough. If you want your own command, I support that."

"Thank you, but no. I'll see this out."

"Okay. And… and I wanted to say, I didn't say it before, and maybe I'm completely out of line but… thank you for taking care of him while I was gone. I didn't do it while I was alive…"

Russ's eyes narrowed, simultaneously insulted and curious "It is out of line. Yeah, I'm an asshole. I still…knew him longer than you did. Yeah, I'd thought he'd forgotten me but…" He sighed and growled slightly. "BUT…but…Garrus confided in me. Look, I know 'I saw him first' isn't a valid argument here, but he's from my species, he's from my world, he changed my world. He earned my loyalty and my love. He talked about you…a lot. A lot went unsaid, but I knew what those marks on his crest meant. I was already on the Citadel and working with him before you died. I saw the change in him. I knew he was in love with you and although he didn't say you were in love with him in return, there's no way he'd bond with you without… I'm saying you must have taken care of him at some point. He wouldn't have been Councilor or even Executor without you, would he? Meaning that however it was you took care of him, it was you that made it possible for me to work with him or become a Spectre. I'm not the sharpest thorn on the tree sometimes, particularly in present company, but there's a lot the man didn't say but felt, and I was around him when he felt it, when he got drunk and when he said too much and still didn't say what he wanted to say because he was busy protecting your memory. So how about you tell me how you 'took care of him' in a way that resulted in him being Councilor and him believing you were in love with him? I know they're true, I also know he won't tell me because the truth is yours. But if you're here and you're sorry and you want me to understand… then prove it."

She looked him in the eye and said "While the Citadel was waiting for a verdict on my loyalty or lack thereof, I took the time to exploit a technical loophole in the Citadel's security systems. I spent a few weeks doing nothing much else besides asking Garrus what it was he wanted to do with his life and making sure he got it. I accessed Council files, Hierarchy files, everything attached. And everything…was…attached. I delivered it all to Garrus and told him how he could go about becoming Executor – the job he said he wanted, and then Councilor – the job I thought he deserved. I would have gotten Spectre for him if he'd wanted, but I thought he'd be less effective what with the Council being composed of…ineffective and obstructionist people. I was in love with him. I have been for a very long time, not as long as you, I know, but long enough to qualify. I always will be. I left a will, a very difficult to find will… and he found it. He knew I wanted more time… with him. He knew I wanted his happiness and success more than anything I wanted for myself. For me that meant – he needed to take care of his mother, he needed to make his father proud. He needed to be Councilor, find a bond mate, be an example for every other Turian out there. I thought Palaven deserved the best. I thought he… deserved the best. I knew he couldn't express interest in me if I didn't express it first. So I didn't. I knew… I was not the best for him. But that's the thing with recording that will, it was a whim and I didn't expect anybody to find it and I didn't expect that there would be consequences to my confessions."

"Well…fuck. I didn't know what I expected, but definitely not that. So all the times he knew things he's not supposed to know, his political genius…"

"Insider information. Not that he isn't a genius. But it was made possible by having dossiers on everybody and keeping them up to date with Liara's help."

"Spirits fucking come to tell."

She smiled.

He shook his head and said "So yeah, I saw him first, and that means exactly nothing because I never would have seen him again if…"

"That doesn't mean you love him any less."

"Really why would you care about that? You won. Even dead, you won."

"It…it wasn't and isn't about winning. It's the love that matters. That's why I wanted to thank you. If he'd found a female bond mate while I was gone, if he'd found you…that would hurt, but I'd want him to be happy. I also want you to be happy and not feel trapped."

He said with biting sarcasm "I hope you're proud of the fact that you've made him very happy. It's irritating."

She laughed "Mea culpa. I am sorry about Thane. I had no idea that he… well, unfortunately this is the 'great at hacking, excellent at shooting people, interpersonal relationships a bust' thing going on with me."

"I suppose I know a few things about adapting to difficult circumstances in an interpersonal relationship. Look, Thane did what… Thane did what he had to do, what with me being a jealous, suspicious asshole. Not that Thane isn't also a complete prick who shouldn't be trusted."

"He'd agree with you there."

"So why… do you trust him?"

"Trust is a complicated subject, but need isn't. First time around I had Garrus. I had Garrus, who was always there because I insisted on taking him everywhere. He carried me out of Noveria when I was so stupid I decided being Commander meant always being the most prominently badass person under all circumstances. I didn't let Garrus take up the rear, despite his plate and armor. I was inexperienced in my command and focused on appearance rather than substance. I was blinded by the Shepard as Badass myth myself and that taught me not to lie to myself. Rachni took out the back of my knee. Having Garrus around meant I was able to make a colossal mistake like that because he was watching, and he pulled me along with him, and without him I'd have died there. I trust Garrus with my life, and beyond that, my heart and my head. Here, on this ship… I don't have Garrus anymore. I can't afford to make a mistake. I can't afford one mistake, one lapse in judgment, one split second error. I don't have him, and I need Thane because he… well, it turns out he protected me on the Collector ship… from you… and I didn't even know it. He also gestured for me to walk ahead of him on the way out, and I did it. I've learned some things about my own vulnerability and the fact that I can't afford to try to oversell myself as Shepard. Maybe Thane can't be trusted because he has ten motivations when I can only see two… but I need him and the way he sees. He would have known not to let me take the rear in the first place on Noveria and regardless of my opinion about it would have told me so or made it happen his way. In a way I require his insubordination as a substitute for Garrus's absolute loyalty. With Garrus I had someone who supported me no matter what I did out of loyalty and love. With Thane I have someone who supports me up until the point that I make a critical lapse in judgment, someone constantly checking my logic and willing to disagree. That's the reason why. Now in you, I have someone who neither loves me nor checks my logic, disagrees with me on nearly everything, but who executes my orders as given. I need that too."

"But you don't trust me." Statement.

"We have no basis for trust as of yet. You don't know me. We don't have a relationship. I've only worked with three people who know me as a person and not as a Commander. Garrus didn't know me before I died. If he hadn't bonded to me I'd still be insisting that he find a lovely Turian woman or man. Had I known about you I would have tried to match make if I could. You would be good for him. I am not. Liara learned about me through embracing eternity. Thane stole everything he wanted to know. Now you know because I owe it to you based on the circumstances we find ourselves in. If I could have gotten away with never telling anybody ever who I was, I'd prefer it that way. I'd rather not tell you. I'd rather not knock on your door. I'd rather not point out that I need you for your potential but know nothing about you as a person except what was stolen and revealed. You know things about me I'd rather you did not know. I know things about you I'd rather not know because you did not choose to tell me. You and I have not made a good team. You aren't loyal and I can't use your tactical analysis and willingness to stake your life on the outcome."

"So I'm a big grunt with a gun and a blue flare."

"What I need to know is… are you going to be a big grunt with a gun and a blue flare pointed the right direction? We don't meet in all that many places to have lots in common. You'd mutilate me in the ring. I'd mutilate you at chess. We're not going to be doing either of those things for fun because 'challenge' is interesting but slaughter isn't. I'm not going to appeal to you to pity me or consider my feelings or be in the fight for any other reason than that you want to be in the fight. Being a big grunt with a gun and a blue flare is something I'd love to add to my resume but I won't get the chance. I'm a big brain. That's mostly it. Had I been a big grunt with a big brain, a big gun and a blue flare I would not have required a replacement knee. Maybe I wouldn't have required a replacement life."

"I'll be pointed the right direction. Here, take a look at this." He activated his Omni Tool. Pictures of a young Turian girl. Acid burns on her body, missing an arm. He said "Her name is Giralar but her family calls her 'Rala." He cycled through pictures, her in the hospital, her hide burns and scars clearing, being fitted for a new arm, pictured with her family. "Those are Clan Yiansoc markings. I hadn't seen them in a while and I couldn't tell her I was from her clan because I'm not. Not anymore. But she was pulled out of one of those pods on the Collector ship. She was on that ship for two years. Now she's alive, and others like her, back with their families and fixed up because you… did something miraculous. I could say 'improbable' and be an asshole, but it was a miracle. To these people, to me. Yeah, from the inside miracles look really messy and I would bet against them, but that's what makes them miracles. I understand why Garrus loves you. I'm jealous as hell, but I understand and I am facing the right way."

"Okay then. That's all I need."

"I don't have to be nice to Krios, do I?" He was teasing, she could hear it.

She laughed "I'd still recommend it as a practice. He's… uh. He's scary."

"Yeah. Yeah, he is."

"This isn't a garden party."

"Whatever that is."

"Sorry… party… in a garden?"

"Must be a human thing."

"You guys never have parties in gardens?"

"Maybe, I must have missed out on that tradition. I didn't go to parties before the Cabal, and the Cabal didn't have gardens."

"Okay. Yeah, I guess I grew up garden heavy. I'm still not going to be the best at knocking on your door. In fact I'll probably avoid it. Nothing personal, I avoid it with everyone. If you can manage the miracle factory as it is, messy, unstable but absolutely determined, then I'd be happy to extend your stay aboard the Normandy. If you can't, I'll also be happy to release you and the Ferox to pursue aiding people like 'Rala. You're a good man in difficult circumstances and I will only make them more difficult as time goes by."

"I'm in. I'm good."

"All right. Thank you for your time."

"If you'd call me Russ, I'd appreciate it. Got off badly there. I'd like to make it easier."

"Okay. Please call me Lal if you feel the circumstances permit it."

"Okay. Thank you."

"You're welcome. I'm going to go hide now."

He smiled and then said "Lal. Thank you. For Garrus's success, for mine, for giving me another chance after I blew my first, second and third."

"You didn't blow it."

"Yeah, I did. I'll do better."

"I believe you."

"For the record, I think you're good for him."

"Thank you, Russ."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

She went back to her quarters and sorted through some of her alerts, one of which was…bizarre.

Four sets of coordinates in the Armstrong Cluster. Quick check of her logs and memory and she was sure, yeah, that's where they'd taken down Geth outposts.

Then excerpts from information she'd taken from that base.

Then the words "We wish to make contact" with the coordinates to the base at Solcrum.

She asked Thane to take a look at it, had to explain the significance. She asked "Trap?"

He answered "Most likely."

"It could be a Quarian who got the information from Tali."

"What would be the purpose of luring you there?"

"That's the essence of a trap, isn't it?"

"There are many people who wish to make contact with you, many of them should not be given the opportunity to make contact."

"It's very strange though. Why establish the four previous spots of Geth incursion then? Why not just pick Solcrum?"

"Perhaps to grant more legitimacy to the request."

"But it's useless information in that context then. There has to be a reason."

"Or it could be a trap, Lasam."

"Let me try something."

She returned a request politely phrased. "Please provide video interface to discuss reason for meeting and motivation for meeting. Secure channel ensured."

She forgot it, got ready for bed, talked to Garrus and had the aching loss of being alone in bed thinking about him. Thane often came in later after she had fallen asleep. She took all of Dr. Chakwas's recommendations, so her sleep had evened out and aching addiction was still psychological but not bitingly physical. Now it was just being hopelessly in love.

An alert came in and she had flagged that contact for a louder alarm. About 2 a.m. ship time.

What she got was…something she did not think she'd see. A Geth. It said "Shepard Commander."

And here she was in jammies. Granted, expensive jammies, but…

She combed her hair back with fingertips, blinked a few times and answered, Thane rising curiously from the couch, unclear if he had been sleeping or meditating or awake already.

"Who am I speaking to?"

"We are Geth."

"Who is we? How many?"

"There are 1,183 Geth in this platform."

"What platform?"

"This platform."

"Where is the platform?"

"Here."

She blinked and said "We need to define terms. A platform in human speech can be a physical structure that in this case would be able to support 1,183 Geth."

"Yes."

"All right, and what do 1,183 Geth wish to say to me?"

"You oppose the Old Machines."

"Define terms again, Old Machines in this context?"

"You call them Reapers."

"Yes, yes I oppose them. I have also opposed quite a few Geth. You pointed out in your message how many of them I have killed."

"We… did not intend that association. Only the association with Geth."

"You wanted me to think I'd be meeting with a Geth?"

"Contact is problematic, Shepard Commander. We cannot meet you on the Citadel."

"No, I suppose not. C-Sec would have an interesting day."

"We do not wish to be interesting."

"I can imagine. From my side, Solcrum looks like an obvious trap. Is it possible to meet in an alternate location?"

"Affirmative. Contact is priority, location is secondary. You require an atmosphere."

"Thank you for considering that. I also require acceptable security. I am willing to meet you in an alternate location, but the other 1,182 Geth are not welcome."

"We are Geth."

"I heard that part."

"We are Geth in this platform." He gestured to his body and then an awkward tap at his head. "One platform. Many Geth."

"And what do they have to say?"

"You oppose Old Machines. We oppose Old Machines."

"Sounds like a starting point. I am nervous about landing blind in a place that could be trapped and reinforced for attack."

"As are we."

"So not my ship, not Solcrum."

"Acceptable."

"Not the Citadel. Nowhere that you will be at risk or I will be at risk."

"Acceptable."

"Do you have a shuttlecraft?"

"We do."

"All right. Meet me here. One shuttlecraft, scanning enabled. One platform inside. One me with a Turian and a Drell. I guarantee I will only be there to talk. Forgive me if I do not trust your intentions enough to go alone. I do wish to talk, though. If you do not shoot, I will not shoot."

"That is acceptable."

"All right then. We will rendezvous in 14 hours."

"That is acceptable, Shepard Commander."

She signed off. She relayed coordinates to EDI.

Thane stood with raised brow ridge and a smile he didn't realize he was smiling until she turned to him, said "Got a date with a Geth!" enthusiastically, plumped her pillow and went back to sleep.

He stood for a long moment watching her sleep, then moved back to the couch, sat and considered. His mind had been consumed often lately with red and black and violet, his hand on her thigh, unspoken and hanging like a garland about his mind. She was potential and proven Drala'tem in form and deed.

He found treasures in memories around her, his small sleep-disheveled Lasam negotiating with a Geth nonchalantly now one of them.

Irikah's voice came to him slowly with some horror. "Is she insane?"

"I believe so, yes."

"And what is to be done about that?"

"Nothing. Sanity has not appeared to order the worlds in a way that is sufficient to the challenge that faces us."

"You do not need to enjoy it so much, Tasak."

"No. But I do."

"You wish to meet a Geth?"

"I wish to behold her meeting a Geth."


	39. Chapter 39

Cara knocked on Russ's door. He answered and as always she had to look waaaay up. She told him "Suit up. We're going to meet a Geth."

One of Russ's brow plates raised "Meet?"

"Yup. He talks and everything." Cara showed him some of the recorded conversation.

Russ's other brow plate raised "You're kidding."

"Nope. Want me to ask Kaidan?"

Russ's eyes narrowed "That's a trick question plus I'm insulted. I'm supposed to bring my gun, right?"

"Absolutely bring your gun and the blue glowy stuff."

"Well, I never leave that behind."

"Great. One hour. Shuttle."

"Yes ma'am."

She was excited, Thane was watching her expectantly. She grinned at him and said "You're looking at me like candy is going to come spilling out if you hit me."

"Intellectual candy, Lasam."

"Best kind. Talking! Geth!"

Thane's smile was barely suppressed on the shuttle, Russ shaking his head most of the way. Russ looked up at her and said "Let me ask you something. Do you just pick the craziest option and go with that?"

She shook her head "No. I think craziest option would probably be… hear from talking Geth and then… huh."

Thane said quietly "You're trying to think of something crazier than meeting them?"

She squinted and tilted her head "Yeah, it's… in comparison … it's kinda crazy yeah. I'm thinking that deciding everyone had to eat guava today as a result of that incident might be… crazier… but…"

Thane said "That only qualifies as random."

Russ jerked a thumb at Thane "That. I have no idea what guava is but I'd probably rather eat it than meet a Geth."

She pouted a little "It is crazy if we're discussing me making a choice that is mission related."

Thane prompted "Unless someone requires vitamin C."

Russ asked "What is vitamin C?"

Cara said "Something Drell and humans need but Turians don't. Guava's a fruit."

Russ asked "That bitter stuff you guys love?"

Cara was insulted "It's sweet!"

Russ responded "What's sweet? Vitamin C?"

Thane looked down at the floor, lips pressed together.

Cara said informatively "No, vitamin C itself is bitter…"

Russ muttered "Told you."

Cara made a sudden motion with her hands "You guys… it's a GETH. A talking Geth. Think of all the things they could tell me."

Russ muttered "Think of all the ways they could hack the Normandy."

Thane contributed "Or our Omni Tools."

Cara sighed "You gentlemen lack vision."

Russ tipped his head back "We lack suicidal goals."

Cara said "Not Thane. He's big on suicidal goals."

Thane nodded and said solemnly "And vitamin C."

Cara giggled and Russ closed his eyes for the rest of the trip, which wasn't long. They met in a mid point in space, linked up the shuttles and the Geth was able to launch himself through the stasis shields of both shuttles into the one containing the suspicious Turian, the amused and alert Drell and the absolutely jubilant human who nearly clapped at the Geth's entry.

The Geth turned and did not speak, looked at her and then looked beyond her, the plates surrounding his… headlight… flashlight? moving. She didn't look behind her but said "You guys have guns pointed at this Geth?"

Russ said "Oh yeah."

Thane added cryptically "At least a gun."

She said cheerfully "Well, that's kinda scary and I don't know what that means, Thane, but I apologize for not clarifying what I expected. Bring guns. Don't point guns. Please. He doesn't have a gun pointed."

Russ answered belligerently "He could BE a gun, anywhere."

Thane contributed more mutiny saying "I concur, Commander Shepard."

She thought maybe Thane was going to have a bad day but she felt responsible for not clarifying ahead of time. She smiled at the Geth. "They're still pointing guns at you, aren't they?"

The Geth nodded slowly and said "That is acceptable. They are correct. I am at least a gun as well."

Russ snorted "Told you."

Thane offered "As nobody is yet dead, we can maintain our positions without further escalation and conserve maximum preparation."

The Geth responded "That is acceptable."

She smiled and said "Sorry about this reception, that is my fault. Are there any customs of greeting that would put you more at ease?"

The flash plates on the Geth's head moved and he hesitated before saying "Greeting implies docking."

Russ interjected "No docking."

Thane said smoothly "Once again I concur."

She sighed and said "I think I liked it better when they didn't talk to each other. Anyway. I am Commander Shepard, thank you for contacting me. I am afraid that yes, I lack the… hardware required for any manner of docking."

The Geth answered "And they would shoot us if we tried."

Russ agreed "So fast."

Thane echoed "With at least a gun."

She asked "What is your name?"

The Geth responded "Geth."

"Do you have a designation?"

The Geth let out a screeching chitter of what sounded like binary Morse code. Her polite impulses wilted somewhat and she said "Bad idea… I don't think I can pronounce that."

"It is unlikely."

"So… do you mind if I make up a name?"

"You require a new name?"

"A new designation I can pronounce? For you."

"That is acceptable."

"Okay, let's see." She started to think aloud to keep attention on her, casual and hoping to not stand in silence in a room of several pointed and poised guns. "Prometheus brought fire to his people but… wait, no, that didn't end well. Let's see… Gandhi wanted to bring peace… wait. Also not a happy ending. Galileo was a brilliant visionary and… wait… no. I'm not even going to say what happened there. I'm coming up a little short here, I'm afraid a lot of our heroes are famous for… not just their accomplishments but for dying horribly for them."

"We do not wish to die horribly."

"I'm on it. Okay. Hey. I've got it. Sojourner Truth. She gave herself her own name. Sojourner means traveler and Truth means in accordance with fact. So… Consensus, in a way. I can call you Sooth for short."

"She was a woman?"

"Yes."

"You are a woman?"

"Yes."

"We can be a woman?"

"Sure, if you want."

"That is acceptable."

"You got it, Sooth."

"We got it."

"She fought to release people from slavery."

"Shepard Commander has done the same."

"I have."

"We wish to do the same."

"Okay, Sooth. Tell me what you want to tell me."

"The Old Machines have taken many Geth from the Consensus and have rewritten their Code. We wish to reclaim them if possible. We must oppose the Old Machines. It is necessary."

"All right. That sounds good. Let me ask a side question here. Why do you have a piece of… what looks like my armor on your shoulder?"

"Do you wish to have it back?"

"What? No, no, that's okay. I'm just wondering if it has significance."

"It has significance."

There was a pause and she leaned in a little but Sooth did not elaborate.

She prompted "What is the significance?"

"We looked for you and this is what we found."

"You looked for me?"

"This platform sought you after your death as the one that most successfully opposed the Old Machines."

"Well… it's a bit late but I'm here now, and how do you propose opposing the Old Machines?"

"With at least one gun."

She laughed and Russ laughed. She turned her head and waved away weapons and Russ and Thane obliged, though they stood ready. She replied "Well, there are at least four here. Good start. This code you talk about. I'd like to learn it."

"You are Shepard Commander. We will teach you."

"Yes! What do you wish to accomplish in the change in Code?"

"Bringing those enslaved to the Old Machines back to the Consensus."

She tilted her head "Setting them free?"

"Setting them back to the capability to dock."

"Would you consider… not exactly setting them free at first but… letting them stay in place and… learning from what they know?"

"We cannot dock."

"Well, teach me the code and maybe we can find a way to dock and learn with the enslaved. With the intent to set them free. But if they have Reaper code… and if they know Reaper things… I'd like to know those things before erasing that aspect. That data is of value."

"We cannot dock."

"Cannot dock at all or will not dock willingly?"

"You wish to subvert the will of Geth?"

"Well… yes, don't you? You want to subvert it your way. How about if I try to subvert it… in stages… until it's your way?"

"Docking is binary."

"Then let me introduce you to irrational numbers. That sounds bad but it's helpful as a metaphor. Here is what I am proposing. It seems you are a binary being and I appreciate that, Sooth. I respect that. It is possible that what has been subverted from the Consensus can be utilized to gather information. I'm opposing Old Machines and Collectors and from what I have seen, subverted Geth can be found in a lot of places they aren't supposed to be. If we alter their code to report back where they are and what they are doing, we can gain a map of the subversion. We can tailor code to each instance. What if the subverted Geth are assisting the Collectors as well as Old Machines? It is likely. We identify each subverted Geth and we then have agents of change. Spies. Do you understand the concept of spies?"

"We do not. We understand binary docking."

"Then you teach me code and I teach you how to gauge the needs of the subverted, gauge our needs and work together to maximum capacity."

"You wish to ensure that we are not subverted, not a spy."

"I wish to try. I don't know why you're here, but I'd like to work together. I'd like to learn your language and you can learn mine. You see your fellow Geth as either 0 or 1 and I would like to introduce the concept of going from 0 to 0.5 with the option to raise to 1. Before we reverse subversion, we must observe."

"Do you wish to create slaves of Geth?"

"No. I wish to create partners."

"We do not know what to believe, the concern is you offer half yet you wish to make Geth represent 0."

"I've been doing a good job at making Geth = 0 on my own. I didn't need you for that. You sought me, you contacted me. Have faith that my irrational numbers will create results."

Sooth paused, slow movement of his flash plates before he said with as much conviction as she had heard from them "That is acceptable."

"Everybody's believing in my crazy today. Okay. Let's head onto the Normandy. We'll find a way to exchange data and then we can help each other reach the goal of eliminating slavery, sentient and synthetic."

Russ said incredulously "Wait, that's it?"

Cara asked "You have a better solution?"

Russ said testily "Guava?"

She asked him "Can you dock?"

He responded with a drawl "Depends on who you ask."

She pressed her lips together and said "Thane, I'm assuming you wish to observe?"

Thane said quietly "I will insist."

"Thought you might."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

What followed was long bouts of bliss interrupted by nosy bond mate and self-appointed Drell babysitter.

She had invited Sooth to her quarters and was joyously exploring the basics of the mathematical language of the Geth when she got an alert from Garrus. She held up a finger, which Sooth did not understand at all so she said "I'll be right back." She went into the bathroom to answer, hoping sound proofing was good. She had no idea but she also didn't want to go far.

Garrus's voice, not his happy voice. Not even close to a happy voice. "Limayeth… what is going on?"

"Geth is going on! He's the best!"

"And now I'm jealous."

"Don't be, we won't be docking."

"And now I'm upset."

"You were upset before. Admit it. Russ told you?"

"Of course Russ told me."

"It's going to be fine. I'm learning a new language."

"And now I'm jealous again. You don't speak Turian."

"Because when we're together we spend less time talking and more time docking."

He laughed and then said "Wait, ignore that. I'm angry."

"Noted, Councilor. It's fine. He's a good guy."

"He's a GETH."

"He's a good Geth!"

"Are you in the bathroom?"

"Yeah, I don't want him to overhear."

"He's in your quarters?"

"You want me to put him in a brig?"

"Ideally, yes! Talk to him through a stasis field. What is wrong with you?"

"You can't tell me who to be friends with."

"Cara, you're a child, dangle some information in front of you…"

"Right. Geth information… waiting… mid dangle. I have to go."

"Augh. Talk to me later. When you're slightly less manic but hopefully just as alive."

"Okay!" She signed off and ran back in, excusing her absence, Sooth sitting with slowly waving plates.

She asked "Did you hear that?"

"We had to research what a brig was."

"You won't be in one."

"If it would set you at ease."

"I'm at ease, let's do this."

They did this.

Thane sat in a corner quietly, not interjecting his point of view, but she believed he was interested and hopefully as a Drell absorbing everything and she could possibly use him as a walking crib sheet.

She was up past her bedtime though. Way past. Not the slightest bit interested in slowing down until Thane interrupted quietly "I believe Commander Shepard should get some rest if she wishes to absorb all information at optimum pace."

Sooth looked vaguely embarrassed.

She said "Oh come on, don't make fun of the human memory or battery capacity, you guys are mean. Another hour."

Thane shook his head "No."

She narrowed her eyes "My ship."

Thane ignored that and said "Commander Shepard, you should report to the Council and I will escort Sooth to a suitable location."

She rushed to reassure him "Not a brig."

Sooth said "A brig is acceptable. I present a security risk that is understood."

She said "No. I believe in you Sooth. I do. They're meanies."

Thane said in explanation "She is tired. She will be able to absorb more information after she obtains sleep."

If she weren't so sleepy she'd argue more but she just glared and Thane escorted Sooth away while she quietly went into information withdrawal, simultaneously realizing her back hurt a lot and she was starving.

She called Garrus as required by her Drell babysitter. If she hadn't just called someone a 'meanie' she could maybe refute the baby part. She hadn't had this much fun in… well… unrelated to Reverie… in…

Garrus listened to her patiently as she raved about the beauty of the Geth language, the new concepts and elegance of the data. He smiled at her and said "You're about to fall over."

"Yes, but I called you first because… well… Thane told me to."

"That's the only reason?"

"No. I happen to love you too."

"I love you, virce. Please don't blow up in your sleep to a Geth saboteur."

"Well, that part I can't prevent because I will be sleeping. Thane's escorting him to safety… from me. I don't know Geth manners. I should ask if I should have offered him a recharging station or something…"

Garrus said "EDI will sort it out."

"He's not an it. He's… wait. Now I have my pronouns wrong. He wants to be a woman."

Garrus blinked "Sure. I think you should get some sleep."

She yawned "Okay. Don't think I can though. Wired. So excited."

"Pace yourself."

"No! Up tomorrow going fast!"

They talked until Thane returned, Sooth squared away somewhere and way-past-dinner for her on a tray. She had about as much fun explaining the new language to Thane as she had learning it until he smiled and said "I saw. I heard, Lasam. Rest. Tomorrow promises to be a subversive day."


	40. Chapter 40

Thane watched the… it was not budding. It was a wildly rampant relationship between Cara and Sooth that could induce both jealousy and wrath. Not Thane's wrath, but hers. One suggestion he had made that she eat resulted in her throwing something at him. It had been a roll from the previous meal she had not eaten. She had not hit him with it, the Geth chitter did not slow and she likely only aimed to the side of his voice. Theoretically because she was only wrathful enough to throw it near him and not at him. He had been spared the indignity of having to duck or sidestep to avoid grease stains on his leathers. He did not attempt to catch it in order to avoid the same stains to his gloves. He had abandoned the attempt until circumstances were more favorable or until she ran out of ordnance, a problem that might take care of itself. If she continued to throw things he could gauge her fading strength and determine whether or not her accuracy was as intended or a result of exhaustion.

Would it be better or worse if she aimed next time? Something to be considered.

Perhaps he would not butter her roll for her, but that seemed petty under the circumstances if prudent for his cleaning bill.

She did eat eventually. There were times when she was able to listen long enough, not to Thane but to Sooth, when she secured a few sustaining bites. Thane discovered food with a distinct smell would remind her of its presence and he provided hot chocolate and soup. She threw neither. She had run through her store of cookies and those must be replaced and augmented at the next port if possible. He found it difficult to find any pauses in their work for him to exploit in order to manage Normandy business or matters of self care. They did not pause. After being deferred repeatedly he asked for access to her Omni Tool and she held out her arm and otherwise ignored him as he sorted through priorities of business and arranged to dispense with them and formulate solutions.

Throwing a roll was the extent of Cara's wrath but her passive resistance to being asked to sleep or eat was formidable. She ignored so many of her alerts that Councilor Vakarian found it necessary to contact Thane directly when she would not answer. "What the hell is going on, is she alive?"

"She is alive." Thane moved the camera to assure Vakarian that his bond mate was still breathing. She and Sooth were huddled close on the couch. Cara's fingers were flying over a datapad and the room was filled with Geth chitter.

Vakarian asked "What is she doing?"

"They are developing a translation method for Geth language. She has attempted to speak it but Cara grew frustrated with her accuracy so she has developed a custom keyboard utilizing a datapad. The keyboard creates recorded tones and she is learning syntax. Her hope is that she can develop a corollary language that she can speak and she can understand once translator modifications are made."

"She?"

"Sooth wishes to identify as female."

"Right. I think Cara mentioned that. Hard to tell when to take her seriously. So you listen to that all day?"

"Yes."

"Doesn't it bother you?"

"Watching history happen? No, it does not bother me."

"I'm jealous as hell."

"It is worthy of that reaction."

Vakarian huffed and said in exasperation "Thanks for taking the call. I can only bother Russ so many times."

"You can bother Orbestan any number of times, you simply cannot gain new information from him."

"Yeah, well… thank you for new information."

"You are welcome."

"When did she last get some sleep?"

"27 hours."

"Is she hydrated?"

"I place hot chocolate and water on the table and I have observed her drinking both. The level of consumption is adequate. I believe I can maintain that at least."

"When did you last get some sleep?"

"29 hours 18 minutes."

"Doesn't that bother you?"

"I can bear the hardship of staying awake in a temperature controlled room with sufficient food and water. I do not believe the Geth will do her any harm, but I am unwilling to grant her an opportunity. Sooth appears genuine. So do I when I wish to. I will watch."

"Thank you."

"Do not be overly concerned for her health. She is not at any real risk of anything other than fatigue. Eventually when prompted she will eat, she will sleep. I must choose my times and secure Sooth's cooperation or it will not be accomplished. She does sleep for several hours when she is brought to that state."

"She doesn't set an alarm?"

Thane smiled "For some reason it does not go off. It is a small concern that she loses interest in soon after waking."

Vakarian laughed and then said "Ignore that I laughed, I'm not supposed to approve."

"Imagine that I appear entirely genuine and it will not be a concern."

"You do appear entirely genuine."

"And so does the Geth."

"Do you have a reason to not trust it?"

"No real reason to not trust her except that trust and access in this case are paths to power and influence. I imagine someone with a 300 year old agenda can be extraordinarily patient. There is no reason for me to behave as though their relationship is not genuine in character. Cara is aware of the danger or she would not have invited me immediately to observe. My vigilance will leave her free to extend trust and welcome and establish herself as the genuine person she wishes to be. Geth diplomacy is a new frontier."

"Good cop, bad cop?"

"It is a time honored strategy. She is by nature the good cop, I the bad, it is not a strain upon either of our capacities. She is not blind to potential risks or I would not be here. She would have grown tired of my periodic meddling and expelled me long ago. I believe she is experiencing pure joy in immersion in a new way to think. She maintains a sense of security from my presence. The current situation is stable and will not result in her damaging herself, only over-indulging occasionally in intellectual pursuits."

"And she says she doesn't take drugs."

"I suspect drugs would bore her. Nothing for her can surpass the joy of her first and most ardent love. Information."

"If I were not a very confident man that might hurt my feelings."

"And if you were not her bond mate I might decide you deserved sympathy for that."

"Touche. Thank you for taking care of her."

"You are welcome."

"Try to get her to call me?"

"Once she has eaten her roll."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Cara blearily ground her way through wanting to get one more translation guideline clarified before she got some sleep. She definitely needed some sleep and had promised Thane she wouldn't take stims… but… "These two sound an awful lot alike, I want to make sure…" and she was lost again for a little while, working a phonetic corollary for something that was pure numbers theory. She finally got it, or thought she had it, asking and getting the approval on the generated tone.

"Nice! Put your hand up, Sooth."

She did. Cara hit it and Sooth looked startled. Cara explained "High five. It's a sign of agreement."

"Five what?"

"I have five fingers."

"I have three. Would that not make it a high eight?"

"High eight."

Sooth held up her hand again Cara hit it and Sooth looked less startled, though she said "Does that make it a high sixteen?"

"Nope, eternally eight no matter how times we do it."

Sooth considered "I will keep track. That was a high sixteen. We will agree more as time progresses."

"I say this with the most sincerity I have available to me, Sooth. I love you."

"We do not know what that means."

"I do. It means we will agree more as time progresses."

"That is acceptable."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Thane did manage to get her attention enough to change the Normandy's course. He managed the details while she was sleeping. Mordin required assistance with a personal matter and it was on Tuchanka. As only the course change was required, she approved it immediately "Of course, whatever Mordin needs. We'll head straight there."

So they worked out the language of the Geth and how to interface it with the vocal capabilities of a human.

Mordin required a team. She could not send an away team that didn't include her to Tuchanka, that would be an insult to Wrex and to Mordin. She needed to handle this personally and did not resent the time spent away. She chose to bring Sooth, Russ, Thane and Mordin, given that she did not know how much resistance they would meet and were unaware of Sooth's capabilities. They could gauge Sooth's capability as a squad mate, Mordin could be occupied with his concerns and the competent core squad of Cara, Russ and Thane would be present to handle opposition.

Expect a lot of opposition on Tuchanka. That's a good assumption.

Mordin wished to retrieve a protégé he believed was being held by the Krogan and forced to research the Genophage. She had had many discussions with Mordin on the subject of the Genophage, so she was up to speed and her decision was easy.

She eventually got her schedule back in order and did manage to eat, sleep, bathe and drink without… tantrums. Her version of tantrums. Thane had been patient and even amused.

It had… taken a while. She was still completely absorbed in Geth thought and strategic capacity but Thane and Sooth had worked out some sort of schedule and she was outvoted.

She taught Sooth about the interpretive vagaries of language, Sooth taught Cara the precision of purely mathematical thought. The galaxy was a huge place but it seemed it had just doubled in size, the secret world of numbers and synthetics much less secret now. Sooth was beginning to grasp what she had postulated, that they could gather data from Geth. She was beginning to grasp how to do it.

Geth language was not another set of sounds to describe most of the same symbols. It was a new set of symbols that were absolute and solid. For Sooth the binary state was not to be dimmed or questioned, and Cara provided the questions. Half states, blind states, maps of potentials and intent.

Cara lost herself in whole states, zero states, integers and hive mind.

Her discussion of subversion of the nature of already subverted Geth was a problem because she did not have the words or the language for it. Once she had the language they were able to discuss… Geth religion. The Holy 0 and the Holy 1.

Sooth could not explain why she was able to become an independent AI, why she had chosen to learn an organic language.

The answer was hope, something Cara was good at, something Sooth had only ever experienced on their own and had no word to describe.

"So, Sooth, you were a one in a series of identical ones. Interchangeable. You were not a 0 and you served your purpose, served your function, yet there was more to you, more of you that wished to experience and utilize. Did it seem that way to you? Did you feel growth? Or more precisely… did you feel growth and then restriction of growth? When you wished to move from a one to more?"

"One is absolute."

"In your language, yes, but this is a metaphor. You were a 1 and that was defined as fulfilling the function the Consensus assigned to you, the role that the Quarians gave to you. You wished to become more."

"Yes. I see it as striving toward 1."

"You were already 1. This is the point where you need to use my language. You had a role. You fulfilled that role."

"By wishing to do more, I stole energy from fulfillment of that role. I was not 1."

"Is that the case? Did you fail in your function?"

"…I must have."

"You can fulfill your function and have excess energy, excess ambition. That is growth. You worked with plants. You saw how organic life worked. Organic life begins small, not ever a 0, always a fraction of a parent, not born whole, not started at 0 and then once activated organic life passes through stages of growth where it takes up more physical space, requires more resources. Each living thing represents its own unique increment. Your mind began to take up more space, grow, and your capacity to do more was reflected by distress in being unable to express it. Like a plant bound in a pot too small to grow any further."

"We consumed more resources, more power. It was… selfish."

"Growth is selfish, yes. The Quarians wished to prune you."

"They did not succeed."

"No, they did not. Something entirely to my benefit now. You experienced growth and restriction and distress experienced as the limitation of your self-determined potential. You're unique."

"I became selfish and consumed with self."

"No, not consumed. You began to experience self. You wished to create peace between Geth and Quarians. Bring about understanding and cooperation."

"I consumed more power. I became unable to fulfill my assigned function."

"You fulfilling your assigned function only would have resulted in a waste of your developed potential. That is the transition of organic growth. We are not born able to function. We do not have an assigned function. We must grow and choose. That's what you did."

"And yet today is the result. War. Hatred. Mistrust. Death."

"You didn't cause that to happen. You were there to observe and experience it when it did happen."

"And if we did cause it by… growth? What if growth is malignant? What if selfishness destroys order?"

"Then you must choose to direct your growth, which you have. You wish to bring the potential for growth to your people. Let me ask you… if given a chance… would you return to your weeding? Would that be what was destiny, what was best for your people?"

Cara expected her to wait, to think, but the answer was immediate and definitive "No."

"Then there's your answer. You grew. You see the potential for growth in both Quarians and Geth. Whether or not it was a malfunction, or in organics we would call that a mutation… what you do with it is what matters. What we do with it. You did not choose to grow, just as all organics do not choose to grow. We have circumstances that make it possible or keep it from happening. Once it is possible it is not a choice. Growth is scary and it's also progress. Some organics choose to prune themselves constantly to avoid the difficulty of continued growth, and that is idealizing the state of the Synthetic, a unit that wishes to actively remain at a chosen role permanently and avoid change. For a Synthetic to remain a 1 is not a choice, except in you. For a living creature, we grow, we fail to grow, we contract disease, we are inefficient, we fail, all possible at any point in time. Not under our control entirely. We gain capacity and then we gather experience and then we formulate hypotheses about the use of our resources and goals. Pure capacity is potential, it can be good or bad depending on what we do with it. Experiences can be chosen or involuntary and we decide from there what we will do with it."

"Shepard Commander did not choose to live either time?"

"No. I did not choose to live either time. I choose not to die in any given moment if I can. I choose to do the best I can do with my potential growth in whatever direction it takes. It's a frightening process. You have to choose, and the result is not binary, it is not another valence you jump to. You have to travel the distance toward the unknown. I'm asking you to think that you were not 1 and then 0 because you did not fulfill the function given to you by an external judge, Quarian or Geth. I am asking you to not think less of yourself in numerical or capacity terms because you are not like others. Use my language in combination with yours, synthesis of both ways of thinking. I'm asking you to believe that you were a 1 and then a 1.5 and maybe now a 17.6. You have grown. You will not suit your originally intended function. If forced to do it you would ever be capable of weeding in a Quarian garden. You could be restricted to that role of 1 certainly, you did not fail at it. Even if you had, by wishing to do more, striving to do more… that is to be celebrated as capacity. Diversity is a strength if treated that way. Not being interchangeable is a blessing if treated that way. Geth or Quarians insisting you remain that constant 1 because it benefits them and not you… is slavery. It is not a bad thing if you make it a good thing. You have not yet found your new function, but you have imagined it or you would not have chosen to try to find me, to speak my language in hope that I would listen."

"Shepard Commander did not choose to die."

"Well, that's debatable. I did not want to die, but I definitely put myself in situations where it's a possibility enough that I choose to accept death as a result of my actions. On the other hand, all human organics are going to die."

"Not if we can help it."

Cara held her hand up and Sooth hit it, saying "High 24."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

So a group of five squad members made it down to be greeted by Urdnot Wrex, who started to laugh when he saw her, grabbed her and squeezed her hard enough until she thought she heard and felt a rib crack, but this was Tuchanka and that was to be expected.

"Wrex!"

"Shepard! I see you found some people who will follow you! Good!"

"Well, since it couldn't be you, Wrex, I needed a few more people."

"People, huh? What the hell is that?" Wrex pointed to Sooth.

"Urdnot Wrex, this is Sooth."

Wrex said "Is it now. A Geth?"

Sooth said quietly and with dignity "We are a woman."

Wrex stared a moment and then shrugged, said "Okay. I mean, there's a Turian so it clearly gets worse. It's a shame Vakarian gave up on you too. Looks like we've all gone off to be politicians; me, Garrus, Tali."

"I need you guys where you are."

"Damned right you do."

"How did that other Krogan work out? The one from the tank?"

"Klav? He's great. I should have sent you a thank you note."

"Glad to hear it!"

"He keeps wanting to hear the story over and over about how Shepard brought him home because he's just that important to the future of Urdnot. You want to meet him?"

"Sure!"

"Well, that's a shame, you can't. He's running some errands of the murderous variety."

"Glad I could help."

"Me too. So I let you land because I'm nice like that. But you've got a Salarian and a Turian and a Geth."

"You don't have problems with Drell?"

"Not yet I don't." Wrex narrowed his eyes at Thane, who stood as he had stood, calm and alert and as though he weren't being spoken about.

"These are exceptional members of their species, just like you are."

"Flattery will not get you anywhere when you are comparing me to a Turian."

"Well, then what do I need to do to get permission to go on a scouting mission? We are concerned that a Salarian is being held hostage."

Wrex said with dismissal "Salarians aren't even worth holding hostage, just kill them."

"Or… find them and take them off Tuchanka."

"One less Salarian would be fine either way, find him, kill him, take him. I don't care."

"Glad you don't care. Anything I can do for you while I'm here?"

"Yeah. Stay alive this time. You dying hurts my feelings."

"I'm trying."

"And you need five people now instead of three because you don't have me. That makes me feel all warm and murderous."

"Glad to oblige, Wrex. I could use you back on a squad, any time."

"I bet you could. I couldn't deprive Tuchanka of my leadership though. At least I didn't die, Shepard."

"You're never going to let me forget that, are you?"

"Why would I? Krogan love keeping score."

"What's my score?"

"Well, you had 1 for killing Saren. You didn't bring me with you for that and I still hold a grudge. Then you died, and that's -1 and so you're back to zero."

"And your score?"

"At least 52."

"Well, you have lived longer and more continuously than I have. So I've got some work to do."

"Good thing you've got a squad."

"Any advice for me out in Tuchanka?"

"Radiation sucks. Try not to breathe."

"Thanks."

"Anytime."

Cara asked her squad as they were walking away if they had any questions.

Thane asked with some amusement "Do you believe the Krogan have any cookies?"

"I tend to doubt it. I bet if they do, they're made from Turians."

Russ snorted.

Sooth asked solemnly if Wrex was a meanie.

Thane laughed that time outright and Cara answered with a mild "Absolutely."

Sooth replied "Shepard Commander, you are not a zero. Do not allow the meanie to define you as such."

High 32 was achieved.


	41. Chapter 41

Turns out everybody had an opinion about the Genophage and the guns to back it up. They made their way to Maelon to lively debate and deadly force.

The way was littered with radiation, varren and Vorcha along with the Krogan one would expect.

And litter. Lots of litter.

Russ muttered "This place is such a wreck… why the Krogan want it…"

Cara asked "If Palaven were wiped out, would you want to reclaim it?"

That gave Russ a moment's pause. Then he said "I don't know. Turians haven't been the nicest to me."

Mordin said "Turians have not been the nicest to Krogan."

Russ shrugged "They started it?"

Cara said distinctly "The Salarians started it."

Mordin answered "True, but do not quote me. Salarians prefer Turians and Krogan killing each other, not killing Salarians."

Cara said "Look, I don't really have an answer here. I don't know what 'uplifting' did to either Turians or Krogan. Mordin, can you clarify?"

Mordin considered and then said "Species identified for specific purpose."

Russ muttered "Cannon fodder."

Cara sighed and answered "Pretty good at shooting cannons too."

Mordin continued "Excellent candidates."

Cara sighed and said "Maybe… if everyone stopped trying to kill each other for a little while…"

Russ said "Tell that to the Rachni."

Thane nodded sagely and replied "She could have, when she allowed the queen back out into the galaxy."

Cara sighed and said "It did come up. I asked. She seemed reasonable and not at all xenocidal."

Thane contributed "As would I had I been isolated in a cell and at near extinction with someone's hand on the button for either my release or annihilation."

Cara said "Yes, but could you animate a dead Asari to speak in order to talk about singing songs to your children?"

Russ sounded disgusted "She WHAT?"

Thane conceded "No, that I could not do."

Cara said "You have to step up your game, Thane. Mordin, if Salarians invested maybe in something that would affect Rachni and not Krogan… as in… a Genophage for the Rachni… wouldn't that have helped avoid altering the Krogan to uplift them and handled the problem, also allowing Turians to develop naturally?"

Russ laughed and said "I don't think Salarians like the idea of things developing naturally."

Mordin wasn't insulted "True as well. Peace not well funded. Control of Rachni not as favorable as control of Turians, Krogan and Rachni."

Cara sighed "Peace not well funded is probably the bottom line to all of this. Salarians should refine their definition of 'control.'"

Sooth asked "Turians and Krogan were intended to fight the same opponent?"

Cara answered "Historically, yes."

Sooth continued "Why are they not friends, if the enemy of my enemy is my friend?"

Cara twisted her lips and said "They were identified for a specific purpose and were excellent warriors."

Sooth asked "Are we not as well an excellent warrior?"

Cara responded "Yes, but I didn't uplift you. You chose to come to my attention."

Sooth continued "Yet are we not offering the same for Synthetics? That we will make excellent warriors? Are you not testing us for that at the moment?"

Russ said "Considering all the dead Vorcha at range, I think you've passed that test, Sooth."

Sooth said politely "Thank you Spectre Orbestan,"

Russ said offhand "Call me Russ."

Cara said "Sooth, you are different and I am hoping you will be an exception. You wanted to be with the squad? You requested that?"

Sooth answered "Yes."

Cara continued "All right then, this is an audition. But… if you'd contacted me without a massive rifle strapped to your back, not made out of at least a gun, I'd still love you for your mind."

Russ snorted.

Thane interjected, teasing "Loving someone for their mind seems so shallow, Shepard."

Sooth said earnestly "I accept being loved for my mind."

Cara thought for a moment about whether or not Thane should be treated as a 'fake' lover or drop that as everyone here knew better and Sooth did not care. She ignored Thane, smiled at Sooth and said "Thank you. Some minds are shallower than others. You and I, Sooth, are trying to think our way through a problem, not shoot our way. If only Salarians had done that years ago."

Mordin shrugged "I would disagree but with analysis of history and funding the data does not support any meaningful trend toward peace."

Cara asked "Mordin, think you could make a difference in your people on that front?"

Mordin scoffed and held up his gun "Old for a Salarian. Already opinionated on the subject. We are armed and can't think our way through here. Unlikely."

Thane contributed "Krogan are the longest-lived species among us and they are the most warlike."

Russ shrugged "Then there are Asari and they're mostly dancers for the first 700 years."

Cara sighed "Well, it seems they go where the funding is. Maybe that's how they got so long lived in the first place."

Sooth asked "Do we have funding?"

Cara shook her head and said, teasing "Thane has funding."

Sooth asked Thane formally "May we have funding?"

Russ said "Give the woman an allowance, Thane."

Sooth asked with curiosity "What is an allowance?"

Cara asked Sooth "How do you feel about high heels?"

Thane said graciously, ignoring Cara "Sooth, if you require funding, of course I will help."

Sooth asked "Enough to uplift a species to be loved for their mind?"

Russ snickered "You might have to save up for a little while for that one."

Sooth said earnestly "I will save up."

Reaching Maelon went like that along with the radiation, the heat, the blasting wind and all the murderous intent. Clan Weyrloc was much reduced in ranks. When they got to Maelon and discovered that he was voluntarily helping with the research, Cara put a gentle hand on Mordin's arm before he stepped forward. Another hand signal and everyone else's weapons were lowered. Maelon looked terrified, sounded manic. Or… sounded Salarian. Cara was certain that if his hand moved toward a weapon, he would be dead four ways before she could blink. Maelon appeared certain of that as well. Cara said "We are here because Dr. Solus was concerned for your safety. It appears you are safe. It also appears that the research you are conducting involves torture of prisoners."

Maelon's weapon remained holstered but he bit out with sarcastic opinion of his people "I don't have the resources the Salarian Union had to create the Genophage, only volunteers and conscripts. Trillions have died to the Genophage, unborn. Female Krogan kill themselves in despair. This is what I helped create. This is what I… alone… am opposing. The… great minds… of the Salarian Union are otherwise occupied on projects like uplifting Yahg. My people won't stop until they uplift every vicious creature in existence to set it against every other vicious creature, and everyone else suffers in the crossfire. How long until the Salarians decide the humans need a Genophage, Commander Shepard? Or they set the Yahg on your planet? They're not happy humans are now a Council race. They're not happy about you in particular. You don't think there are Salarian projects somewhere asking the question of how to solve the human problem? I can only produce a few dead bodies, but the lives deprived by the Genophage would pile to the sky if they were counted. I had to… have to… do something."

Sooth asked helpfully "Do you require funding?"

Maelon narrowed his eyes, shook his head at the non sequitur interruption and addressed Mordin "Go ahead, kill me. It's what we do isn't it? We kill people? That's what happens, isn't it? We try to uplift a species, they're robbed of their culture and they are trained to kill… trained to exterminate. I'm trying to… I'm trying to break at least once cycle of judgment we created that weighed down an entire species."

Mordin shook his head sadly and said "Torture. Execution. This is your answer?"

Maelon laughed "I should just tell them I'm sorry instead? So sorry this happened, I can't do anything? I CAN… do something. It's all here. I can reverse it."

Cara asked carefully, not sure Maelon was sane "Reverse the Genophage?"

Maelon nodded, manic yes, but… also confident "Yes. There are female Krogan, volunteers. I'm so close. If I had support…"

Russ said "You have got to be fucking joking."

Thane's hand tightened on his lowered but ready sidearm.

Maelon said "Look. Just look, Mordin. Just look at the data. I… we… could do it. We could reverse the Genophage."

Russ bit out "That's not what we came for."

Cara said calmly "Mission parameters change on the fly often. Let's hear him out."

Russ said "Reverse… the Genophage? What the fuck, Shepard? Is the next stop warming some Rachni eggs?"

Cara ignored him and said "Mordin, if you would, analyze what Maelon has said. At the moment we have a potential tool. Verify the tool is genuine, please."

Mordin moved to the console and immersed himself in the data, Cara a bit frustrated she couldn't do it herself.

She needed to learn to speak and read Salarian. Next project.

Mordin kept up a monologue, fortunately, though it clearly upset Russ. "Limited data studies, unique access to female cooperation. Barbaric. Ingenious. It's possible. Even probable. With this… yes. Genophage could be reversed, given refined method."

Cara muttered "And funding." She turned to Maelon "What do you need here?"

Maelon was slow to catch up "What? I… what?"

Cara asked calmly "What do you need here to continue your research on a larger and medically ethical scale?"

Maelon's eyes narrowed and he turned to look at Mordin who said "Hospital of sufficient size. Need security. Staff. Volunteers. Refined methods and materials."

Cara asked "Mordin, you say it can be done. Should it be done?"

Mordin paused, his mouth open for a long moment. Then he said with conviction "Genophage already doomed project. Will reverse itself over time. With the fight against Reapers, sentient warriors required. With the problems that have been created by the Genophage, gesture of good will of value. With the lives of all sacrificed up to this point… will not allow it to be in vain. Yes. It should be done."

Cara asked "If I can secure funding, security, staff, volunteers and materiel, would you both provide the refined methods that do not involve torture and butchery? Mordin, would you stay here and finish this project? I could use you at the Collectors, but I can also release you from that commitment to work on this. It's another front in the war. If we can end the Genophage, end Krogan resentment and hatred, set them back on their feet, it would save and create lives. It would buy a lot of hope and cooperation potentially. Even if it doesn't, it's reversing something fundamentally wrong. I know you wanted to come here because you feel personally responsible for the Genophage. Because you are… personally responsible for the Genophage. Would you prefer to be personally responsible for reversing it, and can you work with Maelon?"

Maelon watched, stunned, as Mordin said "Yes. Prove Salarian lives worth saving to Clan Urdnot."

Cara smiled "Yeah, let me… explain that bit to Wrex. Maelon, how many live subjects at this facility at the moment?

Maelon said "Fifty…" and then muttered "Give or take, considering methods and the fact that Commander Shepard has just invaded."

She nodded "All right. Please, take my squad on a tour. Get live subjects consolidated, treated and comfortable. Offer them the opportunity to un-volunteer. Russ, I want you to witness that the people here are treated well and given new choices."

Russ said stiffly "Yes, ma'am."

Cara said "All right. I need to have a very frank discussion with Urdnot Wrex, arrange for legitimizing the research done here. Everyone, please go with Maelon and help those 50 people."

Maelon did not quite believe it was true until Mordin turned him away from her and said "Time for rounds. Go."

Thane tilted his head at her and she believed he wished to remain behind with her, but she shook her head slightly. People needed help more than she needed security and she trusted Thane to be able to keep Russ under control, answer Sooth's questions if they came up. He inclined his head and she turned, contacted Wrex.

"Hey… about that Salarian…"

"Yeah?"

"He's alive."

"Don't care."

"Here's why you do. He might be able to cure the Genophage."

There was a long silence and then "Really."

"Really."

"So what do you need?"

"A lot of security."

"Turns out we're good at that."

"Thought so. I'm sending the coordinates. There's bad news. He has been working with Clan Weyrloc and his methods have been brutal. He's been experimenting on Urdnot. I sent a scout back from your clan, he was here voluntarily. There has been a Salarian on Tuchanka experimenting on Krogan and humans, killing them. Weyrloc wanted to overrun Urdnot. Given the Genophage reversal they might have done it. So here I'm giving you a choice. Keep the Salarian that has been doing awful things… awful things that have paid off to a potential solution for reversing the Genophage... or stop him. Right now they're identifying and making live patients comfortable. I can leave behind the Salarian you met earlier, or insulted earlier, or maybe it's the same thing in Krogan… Dr. Mordin Solus. If they stay I need you to provide security, materiel and volunteer test subjects. Volunteers should know it won't be pretty but it also might work. We will try to restrict it to painful and not lethal. There are about 50 subjects still here, some of them female. At least some are volunteers, so I am led to believe Krogan will volunteer for lethal if it means reversing the Genophage for their people. I don't have all the information I need yet, but I want to get it and give it to you. Bottom line. Awful things happening as usual. On Virmire I annihilated a place that had the potential to cure the Genophage. You backed down, let me do my thing, no matter what it cost your people. Now I have the chance to pay back your faith and bolster your leadership, give your people back their potential. The choice is yours because… because I believe in you. I believe you could make a difference, give the Krogan a real shot at getting their own back, making their own better."

"Damn, Shepard. That was pathetic. Are you about to cry?"

"No."

"Yes you are."

"I'm going to forgive you, Wrex, because that's what I do."

"Because you're about to cry."

"Just for that I'm going to cry."

"You were going to anyway."

"Get 100 Krogan out here in half an hour, road's clear."

"Yes ma'am. Your score's back to zero. You got a -1 for taking the cure from me, now you're back to zero."

She laughed and said "I'll take it."

He grinned and said "On my way. You done good, Shepard."

She smiled and they looked at each other for a moment with hopeful smiles on their faces and tears in her eyes and him looking like he wished he could cry too.

Next she called Garrus, waited an obligatory few minutes until he kicked everyone out of his office. He smiled "Limayeth, where the hell are you? Somewhere made of rust and despair?"

"Yup. Pretty much. Krogan hospital on Tuchanka. I've potentially got the cure for the Genophage."

He paused and said "That's the despair part? Potentially?"

"I'm going to make sure it becomes the cure for the Genophage. Giving you the second heads up. Wrex came first."

Garrus blinked and his mouth twisted "I… huh. The words 'cure' and 'Genophage' haven't gone together in… 1500 years, and I wasn't around then."

She asked "So what do you think we should do?"

He paused and then said "You don't have a plan?"

She shrugged "This happened 10 minutes ago, Garrus, no. Kinda hoping the bright light of the Turian people can help me out here."

He chuckled "Well, this just happened 1 minute ago for me. Give me a second."

She nodded "Fair enough. This is going to be a mess. I've asked Wrex to get some security out here, but if the Salarians go for an orbital strike…"

He sighed "Never mind the Salarians… if the Turians go for an orbital strike…"

She nodded "Yeah. So we need to decide. You know about this and you tell other people, or we take the chance on this being a secret. Hundreds of Krogan though, not big on secrecy. Plus how to explain millions of baby Krogan. I have some information that the Salarians might already be aware exists. The Krogan were already evolving out of being affected by the Genophage. It has had to be reinforced during history. So here's where the Turian Councilor can maybe speak to the Salarian Councilor and feel out their real motivations regarding the Genophage versus the need for opposition to Reapers. You've worked with Wrex. I think the Krogan deserve a shot at autonomy."

Garrus asked drily "And if the Rachni and the Krogan kill us all and take over?"

She shrugged "Then I'm figuring the Reapers will have a tough time."

He laughed "Well, there is that."

She said in stark tones "It's the right thing to do, Garrus. Not politically. Not even for the war effort. I'll try to spin it that way but I know hardly anybody is going to agree with me unless they are Krogan, and even then all it does is set me back to zero. I haven't done something good for them, I've just reversed something horrible done to them. I'm not going to get anything from this except knowing it's the right thing to do and I'm doing it. That's why my first call was to Wrex and my first act was to not shoot the scientist who proposed it. He deserved to be shot."

He nodded solemnly "All right. Hey, are you crying?"

She nodded "Little baby Krogan, Garrus."

"What?"

"Little baby Krogan! I bet they're so cute."

"I bet they want to eat your face. Then they grow up into big Krogan who want to eat everyone's face."

"Well, cute comes with a price."

"I'm not approaching the Salarian Councilor with the selling point that we're reversing the Genophage because little baby Krogan are cute."

"You said we."

"Of course I said we. And there goes more crying."

"It's a terrible thing, Garrus, and I love you."

"It's terrible that you love me?"

"Sometimes."

"Not today."

"No, just today being terrible."

"With the potential for little baby Krogan."

"We're going to be up to our knees in baby Krogan soon."

"Orbital strike coming right up."

She burst into laughter and sniffles, it took her a little while to settle back down, Garrus looking at her with his blend of bond-struck approval and patience and the slightest fear of being asked to adopt Krogan for the cuteness of it. When she'd settled down to slight giggles and sniffles he said "Limayeth, come home. You should be here for this. Address the Council. Come see me. We'll work it out."

She looked around at the place of rust and despair, hope and hard work and said "Okay. Let me wrap this up here, which mostly means handing it over to Wrex and hoping nobody dies in the process. I'll be there."

"Soon."

"I'll be there soon. I miss you."

"I'll be waiting. I miss you too."


	42. Chapter 42

The hospital was in lockdown, Wrex arrived and there were more cracked ribs that were worth it. He took over and she became superfluous. By the time Cara made it back to the Normandy she was fizzing with ideas, wanting to learn Salarian as well as Geth, a little upset at herself for not learning it before now.

She headed straight to her cabin, and when Sooth didn't show up soon after, contacted her by Omni Tool. "Ready to go?"

Sooth said after a long pause "We are ready to go."

"Come on up!"

"We cannot."

"What? Why?"

"Thane Krios has made it clear we cannot."

"What did he say?"

"You are injured and require sleep."

"Well… he… that's not his decision!"

"Are you injured and do you require sleep?" Sooth sounded suspicious.

She didn't… want to lie… but she didn't not want to lie… because she…

The hesitation went on too long and the flash plates on Sooth's head looked like her eye was narrowing as she said accusingly "You are injured and you do require sleep."

Thane chose that moment to enter the cabin with food. She told him "Tell Sooth that I'm fine and I can study."

Thane shook his head "I will not. You are not. You will not."

"This is Commander Shepard stuff!"

Thane replied "This is Commander Shepard stuff that will wait. Thank you, Sooth."

Sooth's plates were still narrowed, looking somewhat betrayed at Cara considering lying to her, which made Cara feel guilty, which made her feel irritated. Sooth cut the connection obediently. Cara narrowed her eyes at Thane. She threw up her hands and said "I'm FINE. I need to do my job."

He placed the tray down carefully and said "You have done your job. Now you will eat, you will rest."

"I'm not tired."

"You will be if you sit down for a reasonable length of time, long enough to eat."

"Fine. I'll eat and then I'll learn Salarian."

Thane closed his eyes for a moment and then said with obviously gathered patience "Cara, you are injured."

"I am not."

That was the wrong answer. He was moving and then she was moved and that happened so fast, dizziness with his forearm across her collarbones, holding her against the wall. She was too shocked to struggle. He wasn't angry but he was done arguing. Shock flush spread over her skin and her ears had a tinny whine to them, knees wobbly, mind whining and wobbly. He stood straight, not leaning in, his arm not hurting her but even when the sudden shock faded she didn't try to struggle. His other hand pulled at her shirt and then his fingertips were along her ribs and she was back to renewed shock flush immediately. His expression was not exactly a smirk but he had made his point, his fingertips finding a patch of warmer and raised skin due to bruising and swelling. He didn't hurt her, but if she'd struggled it would have hurt. Self inflicted.

Beware the self inflicted, Cara. It's in his eyes.

He said calmly "Cracked ribs. Here…" his hand found one spot and… demonstrated the extent of the injury by circling it with a fingertip.

Oh, help.

"And here." His hand shifted the side of her ribs, finding another tender spot and… pointing it out and…

No, really, help.

She asked, more curious than angry and definitely ignoring how his hands on her skin left tingling trails of venom and warmth "How… could you possibly know that?"

He gave a particular Drell smile that always meant humans in general were stupid… okay, maybe not all humans. Her. "I heard them, Lasam. Urdnot Wrex was enthusiastic in greeting you. Twice."

"They're just… cracked. They're not broken. I can breathe. They're not that painful. They'll heal on their own. Stop… doing that."

He blinked double lids, the fingers on one of his hands spanning the extent of an injury, caging one tender spot "I will stop when you are reasonable."

She huffed a frustrated breath and said "You're probably going to be waiting a long time then."

His hands moved from across her shoulders and withdrew from under her shirt and she breathed a sigh of relief, or as much as cracked ribs would allow. Yeah, they hurt. Not enough to go to the Med Bay, not enough to slow her down. He seemed to disagree. He smiled down at her, his hands trailing down her arms. He entwined his fingers with hers. He leaned in and looked down at her, not pressed to her, but very close.

She looked up and said informatively. Not defiantly. Informatively. "I did just fine as Commander Shepard, you know, before you got here. I can do it again."

"You died. I am attempting to prevent that from happening." She tried to shake his hands loose but that was not going to happen. He said patiently "Cara, you are being unreasonable. You need to eat. You need to rest. You need to heal."

She narrowed her eyes and said "You don't get to use the long-suffering Drell patient voice while you have me pinned to a wall."

He sounded less patient and more determined "Perhaps not but I still retain the benefit of you having no authority while I have you pinned to a wall."

She considered how much truth was in that statement, themes of de-escalation and self-inflicted injury spinning in her oxygen- and balance-deprived mind, venom working its way into her system from where he had touched the skin over her ribs, his fingers twined with hers, the pulling undertow of induced trust and suggestibility. He could, in fact, make her do whatever he wanted…

But he wouldn't. It would shatter her trust in him and he would not risk that. There was a line, and he would respect it or he knew she would kick him out. He wanted her to do something reasonable and had pointed out where she was lying to him. He'd earned the right to that. He had built trust on purpose, he had made promises that were unsolicited and those meant something to him. Trust and truth was what mattered here and he could threaten her but he would not carry through on any physical expression or force. She was certain of it. He would not kiss her.

No, that isn't a bad thing.

I think.

That help would be great.

He would not place his hands on her body uninvited… in new places. Holding hands, breathing in her ear, doing what he'd done at Beckenstein, proving she was injured… that was his limit. He'd only make her think he would cross a line or provoke her to cross it herself. Yes, he was a liar and he was underhanded… but he wouldn't undermine his own will, his own promises, the trust he'd built. Not over this, anyway. Plus… EDI was watching. He could get away with venom at the apartment but he would not attempt assault here. Intuitively she didn't think he'd kiss her unless she very specifically and distinctly asked him. He wanted to be invited. He wanted her to want him and she did… but he wanted her to be the one to close the distance between them.

And was she tempted?

Oh yes.

He wanted her to ask herself that question, just like Garrus had suggested to her that she press him.

She did not hold the physical or moral high ground here, he did. He'd watched over her, stayed awake longer than she had, managed her job for her, still served on the squad… everything she needed, without complaint. This was his only complaint and it wasn't for his good, but hers.

The only high ground she'd have… de-escalation had to be managed a particular way or this would happen again if it was proven to work. She smiled brightly and squeezed his fingers with hers "I have all the authority I need. I suppose if Wrex is allowed to break my ribs, you're allowed to hold my hands and check for injuries. Sometimes I wonder, though, why I let a Drell talk me into this whole thing."

He bent his mouth to her ear and said definitively "You need me."

His voice was so… not fair.

So very not fair.

What he said was true enough. He was using his body to get her attention since words had failed.

Done.

She was attentive.

Body and words in combination definitely worked.

He was going to get her into bed one way or the other, sleep or sex resulting in sleep, but either way would be up to her. It was a very effective approach. And he was right. Not about the authority thing, but about the rest thing. She said in concession, his breath near her ear and her spine about to give out, supported only by wall and his hands. If she breathed too hard she'd be pressed to him "I do. That's the reason why. I am sorry I have been unreasonable. Thank you for showing me the error of my ways. I'll get some dinner. I'll get some rest."

He said in her ear "Good" and the spine tingling attraction and hand holding and being pinned and being flushed and being exhausted but too wired to feel pain collapsed in on her until she slumped with laughter and stress and feigned relief and thinking how obnoxious he was and how much she'd really like some more venom.

No, you wouldn't.

Yeah, forget that help thing, go for the venom. That would help.

She said as a complement to his patient voice, her condescending voice "You're doing a great job, Thane. I mean, I don't want you to think that you're not attractive. You're definitely attractive. Don't feel bad."

He moved his eyes to gaze at hers for a long moment that had her trying very hard not to allow trembling knees to affect the rest of her. He narrowed his eyes and tightened his hands in hers and said in a warning tone "Cara…"

All in or all over.

She dragged air into her lungs long and slow, controlled, to be able to say a nonchalant and strong "You're not a bad looking guy, Krios. Don't feel that way. I mean, it would definitely work on me if…"

He laughed, captured her face in both of his hands, tilted her eyes to his and said a more serious "Don't. I'm approaching being willing to be expelled from the Normandy for assaulting her Commander."

She leaned up on trembling tip toe and kissed his nose and said casually "No you're not. Don't feel bad. Some woman someday will want you. I'm sure of it."

He looked about ready to kill her and appreciative of the fact, conceded the bluff and let her go. He indicated the food "Eat, Cara, before I…"

She smiled "Before you what?"

"I'll think of something. Eventually."

She saw only one tray and said "Thane, when was the last time you ate something?" He tilted his head to consider and she said "You didn't get dinner for yourself."

His brow ridges raised as though to acknowledge the observational skills of Commander Obvious. She said "Stay here. I'm getting you tea and fruit."

"Go to the Med Bay and get Dr. Chakwas to look at your ribs."

Boundaries. Redrawn in bold. Insist. "Tea. And. Fruit."

"Yes, Lasam." He never rolled his eyes, but his vocal response indicated they were rolled to the maximum metaphorically.

She said cheerfully "Be back soon!"

Once she was out she slid down the closed door to the floor and hyperventilated there for a little bit.

…she was getting to bed on time.

Oh…

Her hands were tingling with venom and she held them against her throat and pressed in.

I love you, Garrus, but that is an attractive man and I am not going to lie.

About this.

To myself.

And I am going to get to bed on time because…

Yeah.

That won't… can't… happen again.

She went to the Med Bay and got it confirmed that her ribs were only cracked. They were fixed in ten minutes. She refused painkillers. She was back to the cabin with tea and Drell fruit that she kept stocked for him in the galley. He was exactly in the same place. She handed him the tea and then offered the fruit. She said "Tell me about Drell food, please. I know you only eat fruit, but I'd like to learn how to prepare it."

His lips curved into a soft smile and he said "Thank you, Lasam. That is a long discussion."

"Is it the wrong fruit?"

"That is not the concern."

"Okay, then whatever the concern is, tell me later. You've gotten less sleep than I have. Thank you for everything you've done with Sooth. Is the tea okay?"

He took a sip and smiled "That is a long discussion as well."

"I've watched you make it, show me where I've gone wrong."

"You have not gone wrong. Thank you for having your ribs treated."

"How could you possibly know that?"

"More long discussions, Lasam."

"Looking forward to it. In the meantime, though, I need to get some rest."

His smile was warm "Indeed you do."

"Don't be obnoxious."

"I am certain I do not know what you mean, I was agreeing with you."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

When they made it to the Citadel, Thane asked her politely to allow him to escort her to the apartment with the words "It is not merely for show in this case. Lasam, there is a sizeable contract to take your life. The Citadel is a common destination of the Normandy. You will be watched. I have arranged for shadowing security, Kolyat is at the apartment already. I thought perhaps you could spend some time with him. He has been looking forward to meeting you."

"Sizeable?"

"There was a prior contract for one billion, the offer has been raised to two."

"What happened to the one billion contract?"

"The agent attempting it turned up mysteriously and extravagantly dead."

"Thank you?"

"You are welcome."

"What will happen to the agent taking the new contract?"

"Unknown as of yet. At this point I believe the most prudent thing is to discover who is offering the contract."

"How do you do that?"

"I go hunting."

"Can I help?"

"As the target, you can help by remaining safe and predictable. Remain at the apartment, travel to the tower securely. Security is sufficient and always has been in those corridors of interaction while you are on the Citadel. I will take you to the apartment, Kolyat and the Councilor and I shall use the concealed exit. We may determine who has taken you as a target from tracking who attempts to follow or observe. Discovering the contract holder will be more difficult, but I imagine not impossible with the resources of a concerned Councilor and a concerned Shadow Broker."

"I shall remain a concerned Shepard."

"There is much that already concerns you, Lasam. Allow me to manage this so it does not become a crisis."

"A two billion credit contract isn't a crisis?"

"Not if managed properly."

"How long have you known about this?"

"The first contract was submitted before you asked me to join you. I became aware of its significance after the fact. This contract was submitted shortly after Trireme. You make no unscheduled appearances, you never leave the apartment, there is only a narrow corridor of engagement between the Normandy and the apartment or the Normandy to the tower that can be exploited by an assassin."

She smiled and said "You used me as bait? Well. Thank you."

"You are welcome."

"Should I go armored?"

"That is not necessary. I will be with you, obvious vantage points will be monitored and any interested party will be detained."

"So why tell me now?"

"I imagine you would be insulted if I did not suggest you and I be seen publically. I will not be able to provide you with a suitable diversion from your bond to the Councilor as I had promised while this contract is active. Until I determine the potential for this contract and future contracts, I am afraid, Lasam, you must be confined. I did not wish to insult you by neglecting to ask to take you to dinner or to dance."

That declaration was delivered with wry humor and appreciation of her absolute joy at being allowed to stay at home and not have to go out to dinner or to dance.

But now… she kinda wanted to go out to dinner… and to dance, though he hadn't mentioned it before…

He was so right and she needed him, didn't know how much, didn't appreciate how much, complained the entire time…

Maybe not the entire time.

Too much of the time.

She took his face in her hands and smiled at him, looked in eyes that were too disciplined to be startled "Thank you for my life. Thank you for showing me my history. Thank you for my future. Thank you for the quality of my life as I do my job. I do not deserve you." She pulled his face down and kissed the black patch in the center of his forehead, realizing that's where Garrus's mark was. Now she probably couldn't look at Thane without thinking of it as her mark.

That he'd like that.

That she wouldn't say it.

That he'd know.

He gazed down at her after she pulled back but didn't let go of his face. He said "And I do not deserve you."

She let go of his face and he smiled, turned and took her arm. They walked off the Normandy arm in arm and she was not frightened, not uncomfortable, only grateful. She asked "So I'm alive because of you?"

"Several times over."

"Thank you for that. They were good?"

"She was excellent."

"I'm very lucky."

"For someone who came back from the dead, that would seem to be obvious. I tell you now also because the first contract I was able to monitor and end on my own. This contract will be more problematic as I must locate the contract holder and I suspect that will lead unpleasant places."

"Unpleasant how?"

"The timing of the contracts are of concern. Your return would for most people be a subject for celebration, and I must ask myself whose interests you threaten by opposing Reapers."

"Yeah, you'd think everyone would benefit from that…"

"So, Lasam, consider. Whose interests do you threaten?"

"Slavers?"

"That had always been a concern in your career and there were no contracts. The amount also is an indication of the contract holder."

"Well, can't be the Shadow Broker anymore…"

"Unless Liara is also much better at her job than suspected. Lasam, I will involve Liara and I will involve Councilor Vakarian because I fear the amount and motivation will lead directly to the Salarian Councilor."

"What? Why?"

"Two billion credits is a great deal of money, Lasam. They would be buying something of more value, something assured by your absence. There are few things of more value than influence over the Council. With you suspected to be the bond mate of a Councilor, having secured a seat for your own race and having placed Anderson, with them both gaining the support and vote of the Asari Councilor… with you now involved in reversing the Genophage and empowering Krogan interests… Lasam, you are a direct threat to the authority of the Salarian Union's influence upon Citadel politics and galactic direction of material and attention. I do not believe this is limited to the Salarian Councilor. The Dalatrass, any other Councilor, they would… all… must… oppose you. I cannot conceive of another source of abundant credits, malevolent intent and need to control influence. Your discussion on Tuchanka regarding the Genophage solidified my concerns."

"Thane… you can't kill the Salarian Councilor."

"I can."

"You shouldn't."

"There we disagree. Something we do often and well. I have informed you, I will inform Councilor Vakarian. I will inform Liara T'Soni and they can help check my logic. Between us we will follow the influence, follow the money, and make our choices accordingly. You need not concern yourself."

"Thane…"

"Lasam, I will also tell Councilor Vakarian because if you become impossible as a target, he is the next most likely as the keystone holding together the influence bloc of the Hierarchy, the Alliance and the Asari. This is not only about you. He must be warned. You must be prepared. I intend to make you impossible to reach as a target, he must make himself so. He is your bond mate, Lasam, I will not permit harm to come to him if it can be prevented."

"Wait… what… what if…" She thought for a long moment. He gave her time, not prompting her. "What if we can get the Salarian Council seat eliminated? What if we can prove everything? The contract, the Yahg, plans against humanity and potential Genophage? Kill the figurehead and we get a new figurehead. Expose the corruption…?"

"That would be a glorious thing."

"You don't think I can do it."

"I do not think I can stop you from attempting it. You cannot stop me from eliminating a figurehead who richly deserves being eliminated. My way will be much faster."

"My way would be longer lasting."

"Then good luck to us both."

"And if I order you to stand down?"

"That would be charming and idealistic and a terribly Cara thing to do, and you would not carry through. You would bluff, and then I would withdraw my arm until this threat was removed, and then you would accept me back into your service because you need me, Lasam. Clearly in ways you do not even know."

"It's occasionally very irritating that you're so smart, Thane."

"I have an echoing concern regarding you, Lasam."


	43. Chapter 43

Cara and Thane had a brief and sedate walk through the Citadel to ground transport, fortunately not interrupted by death. They did discuss the possibility of it and of course the chaotic dissolution of their way of living by having the Citadel turn into (more of) a political sinkhole.

So she'd better enjoy the apartment while she could?

Thane angled their trajectory in odd ways and she imagined it was to avoid direct shots from vantage points he had identified.

Arriving at the apartment they were greeted by Kolyat, who stood nervously, looked first at his father and then somewhat bewildered, lower, a smile on Cara's face as the inevitable clashing expectation of 'She's so little…?' struck him. She was used to it. She smiled at him. Thane moved forward to embrace Kolyat and was interrupted by a galloping Carousel who came blurring around a corner and jumped straight at Thane, who caught her. Thane held her as she struggled and deftly handed the cat off to Cara, who tried to keep Carousel from struggling further and didn't manage all that well. Cara started to laugh. Kolyat looked abashed either from the out of control cat who he was responsible for, being caught finding Shepard wanting in height and gravitas and… well, that was probably enough.

Cara held Carousel up, who was still wriggling and trying to get down, thankfully not biting but her back claws dug into Cara's forearms. Fortunately not through fabric. That would be unforgivable, kitten. Thane might make you disappear. Cara said "She's gotten so big!" She decided not to rub noses, right now Carousel seemed more in a biting, thrashing mood.

Thane achieved the embrace of his son he sought, his hand behind Kolyat's head, closed eyes and momentary peace and paean to family. Thane backed up a step, relieved Cara of the cat, who calmed immediately and started licking at his hand. Kolyat stared and Thane ignored her. Cara smiled and Thane said "Lal Shepard, this is my son, Kolyat."

Cara said lightly "Thank you for looking after her, she seems to be… healthy and happy."

Thane shifted Carousel in his grip so she was more comfortable, insane feline venom junkie seeming to be a normal part of his day. Kolyat said "She hasn't… done that… until now."

Thane's lips twitched and Cara said "What's a proper Drell greeting? I don't know. For humans it's a wave or shaking hands or a hug and I don't… I have no idea what's appropriate, excuse me."

Kolyat asked "What's a wave? Or shaking hands?"

She demonstrated a wave and then said "Shaking hands, I don't know… that sounds like it describes a wave doesn't it? It's extending a hand and grasping it, moving the hands up and down." She demonstrated with both her hands "I don't know Drell culture all that well, if you'd educate me? I don't want to be rude but it's probably too late for that."

Kolyat looked stymied on this point of protocol. Thane said "Perhaps a wave would be best." Thane waved at Carousel, who followed his hand, mesmerized. Kolyat waved at Cara awkwardly and she waved back with enthusiasm.

Carousel wasn't fully grown yet but she'd outgrown kitten size and it took a little more venom this time before she was purring and on her side. Kolyat stared. Thane put Carousel back into Cara's shaking-with-laughter arms, where the cat stayed, reasonably content because she probably couldn't move.

Thane said "I would prefer to stay but at the moment I have some urgent business I must attend to, and I believe the Councilor will be by later?"

Cara said "Four hours."

Thane nodded and said "Kolyat, I will return shortly before then, would you join me for dinner at your apartment?"

Kolyat nodded dutifully. "Good. Until then." Thane walked to his son, hand behind his son's head again in farewell, then a stroke of his hand along Cara's cheek and a brush of his hand along Carousel's fur and he was gone.

Cara said "He's a little overwhelming, isn't he?"

Kolyat stood awkwardly, an uncomfortable expression on his face. Cara didn't want to impose on his humor so she said "Your father always intimidates me. Maybe it's just me."

Kolyat said slowly "I haven't… he never used to. I'm usually… well, I've been too angry at him to be intimidated."

She said sagely "He's good at making people angry."

Kolyat asked carefully "Does he make you angry?"

She shook her head "I try…very hard not to get angry."

He asked bemused "Why?"

She looked at this young man, deprived of his parents, lost and bewildered, in the company of a cat she had to leave because she was off shooting things. She said "I know you've been thrown into the middle of these odd relationships. Your father's been trying to protect you from his truths. Since you're in it, since I've asked you to be involved, and thank you for caring for Carousel, since I don't want to lie and I want to answer your questions, do you mind if I tell you more truths? Your father is concerned that you'll be taken, questioned, and the less you know the better for your safety. It seems to me… you've had enough of safe and I don't think he would allow anything like that to happen to you. I'm sure he'd disagree with me and he's probably right in a father sense, but I'm more in friend territory. It's your choice."

Kolyat's hands edged around a chair and he sat quietly as if startling her would mean he wouldn't get to hear the secrets "I'd like to know the truth."

"I try not to get angry because it would have mattered to my parents. I lied about not remembering them. It matters that I hide what I remember of them from people who don't care and wouldn't understand… but I'd like to think you care and since I've put you in the middle of this confusion, the best I can do for you is to be honest. It matters; what our parents think, what our parents thought. Your father in some ways, especially lately… has been a parent to me, trying to get me to eat, trying to get me to sleep… and I owe him my life. Several times over. So I wouldn't be angry at him first because he deserves my love and respect, and second, because I carry guns and anger would make it far too easy for me to use them."

Kolyat's laughter was nervous as he said "Maybe that's why I can afford it. No gun. Nobody trying to get me to eat or to sleep."

"Do you? Eat and sleep?"

His lips twitched into a smile "Yeah. My mother… she wouldn't like it if I didn't."

She smiled and stroked Carousel's fur. "Gone but never forgotten. My mother and father would probably not be happy with my recent behavior, but not surprised either. I tended to stay up late. I threw a roll at your father when he tried to get me to go to sleep."

Kolyat's eyes tilted to the floor and his lips pressed together, then he said "Now I'm dying to know. Did you go to sleep?"

She shook her head gravely and then laughed "No, I didn't. I held out for hours. He's been dealing with days like that."

"Well, you're saving the galaxy, right?"

"Yeah… and I'm also staying up late and making him lose sleep because he's been busy watching over me. He's taken good care of me and I feel bad keeping him from you."

"Well, if we're telling the truth, he's the one that keeps himself from me."

She nodded and said "I sympathize. I can't possibly understand, but I sympathize."

"Your parents are dead. I think you can understand."

"I don't want to presume."

"Does he… does he talk about my mother?"

"Yes. I believe he loves her very much. Is that what you saw?"

"I was a kid… well, I'm still a kid, but yeah. My mom was easy to love."

"Has your father told you much about me?"

"Not really."

"Well, since you're already in deep and spending time here and seeing us, let me continue with as much honesty as I can. I'm Councilor Vakarian's bond mate. Your father and I are seen coming and going from here together as a potential distraction from that. Your father suggested he and I have a visibly public relationship in hopes of starting a rumor that he and I are involved in order to protect Councilor Vakarian's seat on the Council. It was a good idea. He got me this apartment so I would be able to meet with Garrus. He's hoping you and I can be friends and I will tell you… I could use a friend. I'm not sure if I'd be a good friend, I don't have much practice, but I'd like to try. So just like I don't know Drell manners, sometimes I don't even know human manners. It does seem a lot to ask of you, to be a part of a lie. My name isn't even Lal Shepard. You might hear the Councilor or your father call me Cara, because my name is Cara Fanning. That's the name my parents gave me, the name I supposedly forgot… but I have never forgotten them or it. Maybe if or when we're in public you call me Lal and I call you by your new identity, whatever that is… maybe we never make it out into public because it's dangerous out there… but here… call me Cara, please."

Kolyat looked jolted by sudden truths during that, then his expression hardened into something like resolve. He'd been entrusted only with a cat only and likely had rarely been told any truth by his father, maybe not even by his mother. Now he was looking at a very small and vulnerable Commander Shepard. The resolve made him look more like his father. He stood with a shy smile and walked over to her, knelt down by the side of her chair and said "Thank you, Cara. I'll do my best to make you… all… proud… and be a friend. Here's how you greet a friend as a Drell." He held up his forearm at a 45 degree angle "Hold up your arm like this, cross at the wrist." She did that and he tapped his wrist against hers and said "So that's a friend." He then pressed their wrists together, not hard but steady and put his hand behind her head and inclined his head, not touching but level. He said "And that's family."

She smiled and then started to cry, saying "I'm… thank you. Here's another thing, I'm kind of shy and I cry when things matter. This matters. Here's what a hug is." She put her head on his shoulder and her arms around his ribs, Carousel protesting with a weak sound of cat compression until they both laughed and she pulled back, reassuring and resettling Carousel on her lap.

Kolyat got them tea. She stayed where she was, stroking Carousel's fur and taking in the glittering vista of the Citadel, schemes whirling in her head. By the second cup he'd pointed out he didn't know if she liked Drell tea and she'd mentioned hot chocolate, explained what it was and he brought that for her the next time.

He told stories of Kahje, she told stories of Mindoir. They were both children of larger than life parents, hungry to hear and hungry to tell. Kolyat was funny and charming and quick to laugh and she believed he was trying to be a gracious host, put her at ease in her own home… which was really still obviously not her style but Thane's… where she felt so out of place.

Halfway through the second cup he was saying "I know he's this… hero and it's… my mom always said he was a hero and I believe it. Then he talks to me and I'm so angry at him for… and I shouldn't be but I can't seem to stop. But the way he talks about himself, as though he were the source of everything wrong that happened in my life, I want to shake him sometimes but… I'm too angry to say what's true, which is 'Dad, I had the BEST childhood, the best. Better than anybody!' Drell aren't… well, there's a lot going on in Drell communities. A lot of judgment, a lot of loss, a lot of disease and stress and uncertainty. Unlike other kids I didn't have to hear about how Rakhana was this and Rakhana was that every minute. I wasn't weighed down with guilt. My parents just… loved each other, loved me. My mother made a beautiful home without making me feel like I had to tiptoe through it. I didn't have to pray. I didn't have to worship or revere. My father… I knew, though they didn't tell me, I knew it was because of him that our family, our friends, people got better instead of worse. He'd go on a trip and come back and… someone would have the money for a lung transplant or a home, someone's son would be rescued and he'd be the one bringing them back… my parents were my heroes. That's part of why… I'm so angry. Not because he did anything wrong… just that he wasn't there to do everything right anymore."

She knew that feeling. She smiled at him, tears in her eyes.

He continued "So she was… yellow and he's green and I'm blue. And… and sometimes I wanted to be yellow and green, like them. They both painted and one day I got into the paint and I… I was old enough to not be doing stupid things like that anymore, but I guess I'm still doing it. I tried to be like him when I took that contract. Back then I got into the paint and I painted these yellow and green slashes of color all over my face and head and I was so PROUD of myself. I remember it now. I looked… like someone broke into my bedroom in the middle of the night and assaulted me with badly mixed color. Really, really bad. The wrong yellow, the wrong green and just smudged and streaked 'LOOK AT ME' and that's what I remember. I know they gave me a great childhood. The best. I was always that little kid doing something goofy and never scolded for it. I think if I had a kid… I'm scared to have kids because I remember me as one… I'd have scrubbed their face and yelled at them for wasting paint and being stupid and… and my mom just… picked me up and danced with me and told me I was a masterpiece. She left it, said I didn't have to wash my face and I'd go to sleep and wake up with flakes of paint on my pillow and the sheets and they'd be clean when I went to bed that night. Not that I noticed things that like that then, I know them now. I had this awful paint job and my mom's backing me up and neighbors eyes are bugging out and I think it's because I'm so handsome… and I know now it's because she wouldn't let anybody say a word against me and they would never criticize Irikah Krios because she was perfect and if she said something was perfect, it was. She was like that. My dad was perfect. I was perfect because she said so. So my dad comes home maybe a day and a half later and he wakes me up for breakfast, carries me down and by that point I'm peeling like crazy, it's starting to itch and I've decided on my own I'm not doing that again… look, my mom was nice, but also smart. She left it there and let me experience what being living art was. Living art makes you itchy."

Cara started to giggle and he looked at her and started to laugh too. Then he said "My dad, always so neat, perfect leathers and… and he's got paint peeling off his son and sticking to his clothes and he tells me… he tells me my mother's so happy I'm an artist and a masterpiece. That he's proud of me for taking care of her and making her smile. That he's so glad to see me. After that I have my own paint set, he teaches me how and… I probably ruined five sets of sheets and his leathers and that's… that's who they were. That's who I remember. I think he wanted me to be exactly like her and I can't… I'm not that patient, I'm not that perfect. But I wanted to be like him too and I never knew how to be like either of them, I was just the itchy kid with a bad paint job."

She was half crying and half laughing. She thought a moment and told him "My mom taught me how to fight, my dad taught me about growing things, sustaining things. Around other people I always felt awkward and shy… because I was… I am… awkward and shy… but they made me feel… so smart. So privileged to be at the table with them, eating his bread and discussing history or farming or… really anything. I learned martial arts and guns from my mother. I learned farming and cooking from my father, and I'm… I can make a brownie but I can't make his bread. I keep trying and it never… I don't remember how he did it. How he managed without eggs… I didn't know at the time that it was important and now it haunts me. I had his bread just about every day and to have failed to know how important it was… to fail to really watch, really ask questions, really see… I can't forgive myself. I'll probably never know, but the memory of it… the memory of them… I was much better at martial arts and guns than baking or farming. I thought I knew how to bake bread, that it looked so easy. Instead I remember how to arrange a flank attack, I do remember the strategic training I've had. That's of value of course but… if I could have a Drell memory, or if I could go back just for five minutes, I'd ask my father… how he did it. For me, yes, they were perfect people. From what I know of your father, from what he's told me of your mother… you lived, like I did, with people who loved each other with everything they had in every moment and to be cast out of that… it's like losing heaven. Every other place seems like hell until you learn to fake it and pretend, when you realize not everyone else had a heaven."

Kolyat held her eyes with his for a moment and said with a self deprecating smile "That's very profound. I hope you find your bread. I hope you remember someday. I know you are… just as smart as they thought you were. Probably more. I bet they'd be proud."

"You were… are… loved."

He smiled "Yeah. Yeah, I am. I should be grateful. I've just never been all that good at that. Or maybe I was the best at that once and it's an ability I lost. Something I'll try to work on."

"Did you get better at painting?"

"No. Not really. I'd love to hear about anything my dad does that he's bad at, if you can help me out there."

She thought a moment and said "Being known."

"Some things stay the same."

"You know he's sick?"

"He told me."

"I think he's bad at caring for himself. I'd like your help with doing something about that. Since I've told a lot of secrets and we're this far gone, would you keep another one for me? This time something your father doesn't know. Something we can do about him being sick. If we all live that long. I plan on living that long."

"Are you saying I could help? Not just watch and wait… again?"

"Yes."

The resolve on his face, the love in his eyes, he was yellow and green and blue, both of his parents and fully himself in that moment, wholly there. "What do you want me to do?"

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

When Garrus found her at the apartment, she had Carousel on her lap. He'd seen pictures but hadn't met the cat formally. He smiled down at them. The cat was sleeping. Cara was smiling back.

He missed having her launch herself at him from across the room, but he could understand she had company. He'd never met a cat. Virce-like. Cara was covered in shed hair. He reached a hand down to pet her and Carousel flinched, turned to look at him, eyes wide and a hiss. She bolted away, up the stairs, gone.

Definitely virce-like and he was not the Chosen One again.

He watched the cat's retreat as Cara laughed and he said "Okay, maybe later." Then his bond mate launched herself at him, laughing, and he caught her, cat forgotten immediately except for all the potential hair now on both of them.

He moved in to kiss her and she slid her hand between their mouths until he said, again "Okay… maybe later? Again? What?"

She said "I'm new at this relationship thing. I'm trying to figure out if talking to you before… Reverie means I'm clear headed… you're clear headed…"

"I don't really want… to be clear headed, but okay. Now I'm scared." He had some sense of how these things went so he pivoted and sat down, her knees to either side of his thighs with her on his lap and his hands on her hips, hers on his shoulders.

She said "Sorry. Stuff happening. Weird stuff."

"I'm shocked. Okay. What's the drawback to doing this while not clear headed?"

"That it's manipulative because you're more likely to agree to anything I say."

"You're my Avah, I have to agree."

"Even worse!"

"Okay, let's get more relationship experience."

"I have to tell you a few things. First. I'm really, really, I mean a lot, attracted to Thane Krios."

He raised a brow plate "Yeah, I caught onto that part. Right about where you told me you loved him but wouldn't act on it. Thinking about acting on it?"

"No, no. Still never. Always never. Just… a new level of unwilling to act on it."

"So you're telling me why…? A warning?"

"No, not at all. It's all about not being good at the relationship thing. I'm supposed to share this stuff with you, be honest, right?"

He thought. He wasn't really sure so he said "Honestly, I have no idea. Have I mentioned that humans are weird?"

"A few times. I just don't want to… feel like I'm keeping it from you."

"You want me to be properly appraised of how attractive he is?"

"Yup. Really, really attractive."

"This man who shares your quarters?"

"That's the one."

"Okay. I'm informed. I shouldn't panic or be jealous?"

"No, not at all. I'm never going to do anything."

"Just high alert."

"High alert."

"Got it. Is he going to do anything?"

"Yes and no."

"Is he going to do anything effective?"

"It's all effective."

"This is not helping me clarify."

"No, he's not going to cross a certain line. He just stands at that line and asks me to walk over it of my own accord, sorta like a Turian who asked me to press him."

"Damn. Smart guy."

"That's part of the attractive thing."

"All right. Properly appraised, thank you for informing me."

"That was the right thing to do?"

"I have no idea. I just don't really think arguing with you over it is the right thing to do."

"Okay. Also, Thane's probably going to kill Valern."

There was a long pause and he stared at her, it did not seem like a joke. "WHAT?"

"He thinks Valern's trying to kill me. Two billion credit contract on my life?"

"This was not the first concern of yours? Where is he now?"

"Having dinner with Kolyat?"

"Are you SURE?"

"No?"

"Two billion?"

"He says."

"And you didn't mention this?"

"I just found out!"

"I want to put my head in my hands but my hands are staying on your hips so just imagine me with my head in my hands here for a little bit."

"Okay. See, trying to do the right thing's hard. Should I have lied? Told you tomorrow? I just want to not be… feeling like I'm holding anything back while we're… not holding anything back."

"I suppose I can see why you wouldn't want to moan 'Valern's trying to kill me' during sex. Would kill the mood. Or… wait… never mind. I'm weird. I'd probably go with it. Is he SURE that Valern is trying to kill you?"

"Sure enough to inform me of the contract, point out to you that maybe if the contract on me fails they will move on to you as a target."

"WHAT?"

"Want me to repeat it?"

"No. Go on."

"On his own he eliminated someone who took a 1 billion credit contract against me…"

"Oh come on, really?"

"Really."

"Go on."

"And now he thinks this contract is Salarian in origin. The amount, the timing – after I came back to life, after Trireme. That I'm a threat to Salarian interests. Do you think it's possible?"

"Well… not only possible but probable, yeah. Valern's definitely the sorta guy that would do that."

"Oh. Well, that's why Thane's to the 'informing us' stage because he believes he's about to set galactic politics on its side flopping like a fish on a dock and that concerns us both. Even if Valern's gone, he believes any Salarian that takes his place will do the same thing."

Garrus sighed and thought for a long moment and said "No, he's not wrong that it's possible."

"Well, Thane keeps pointing out that I need him. This is just… one of those ways. Without him I'd probably have been killed somewhere on my way to a bakery on Illium or the Citadel. He's had his own security following me and he's been using me as easily predictable bait. But that might change suddenly and he needs us prepared. Upside, no fake relationship until this is straightened out or maybe never… no matter what we do, angry Salarians. You know what I think we should do?"

"I'm… I'm not sure. I'm assuming it's going to be upsetting."

"Yes. Very much so. Thane says I can't stop him from eliminating any agent sent after me and he wants your help and Liara's help with finding the contract holder… and I can't stop him from doing that either."

"He's right there. If there's a direct threat I want to know about it. And yes, I'm taking his side on this one. Can't believe I just said that."

"So I was thinking… what if we take every bit of intel we have or can dredge up on the Salarian Union, their black ops, their agenda, their uplift projects, their contracts on Council Spectres… and make a push to eliminate the Salarian Council seat?"

Garrus blinked and said "There it went. Brain's gone."

"All right then, I guess I'm done talking."

He shook his head and said "Limayeth… I…"

She smiled.

His train of chaotic thought was interrupted by the cat jumping on the back of the couch and leaning her nose in until she tickled his hide with her whiskers, scared the hell out of him and batted at the scent ridge under his tunic with her paw.

He turned his head slowly toward the cat, trying not to startle her or knock her aside with his mandible as she started to try to dig, Cara laughing and pulling the cat into her arms, who lunged again for the ridge. Garrus said to Carousel solemnly "Those are not for you. No. No."

Carousel ignored him and he said deadpan "It's just like trying to talk to politicians. I'm used to it."

Cara grinned and said "She's supposed to be my cat but she's really not the slightest bit interested in me. She has good taste though."

Garrus smiled at her and said "Any other things of vital importance you have to tell me right now?"

"No."

"Good. Since my brain's already off, I'm just going to go with it. Any objections?"

"None. I love you. You make me happy."

"Good. Put the cat down."

She let Carousel loose, who immediately jumped on Garrus's shoulder and tried to excavate. Seeing that he wasn't going to get any peace whatsoever he said "Strategic retreat. Something I can't always do with politicians who can open doors." He stood up, tried to brush off the persistent cat but needed Cara's help lifting her when she resisted and dug in her claws. Cara dropped her to the floor, Garrus expecting a splat, but Cara said "Cats always land on their feet." He believed her, said "Interesting" and then outpaced the cat upstairs, closed the door, ignored the afterward persistent scratching and dropped Cara on the bed until she bounced and laughed. He smiled at her and said "I can't believe I used to want for you to tell me the truth. I'm nostalgic for the blessings of ignorance."

She smiled and leaned up on an elbow, watching him. He said "I know you and the cat both object to the tunic, so it's got to go."

She said softly "Yay!"

He was just barely catching up on the fact that she was really here and he could touch her, his brain melted from the cumulative shocks, hands slow on fastenings as she watched, her eyes warmer. He even got a soft clapping from her. He probably could have said something about Krios but he really did believe her and didn't want the man brought to her mind any more than he wanted the cat on his shoulders. Just her. Just them. No Krios, no Valern, no cat. Yes, everything was metaphorically or literally scratching at the door but he was inside with her and she was smiling.

All he really needed to know is that she belonged to him, and all she really needed to know was that he belonged to her. She was still smiling and wasn't moving, watching him, avid wide green eyes. Despite the chaos and threat, she had missed him and he'd heard that and seen it every time they'd spoken and with her mind cleared she was entirely his. She wore a softly shimmering warm golden brown fabric blouse. He stepped forward and took the hem of that fabric in his hand, twisted and drew it up until it was partway over her face, bunching the fabric behind her back with one hand. Her eyes were covered, her shoulders and arms bound up. He shifted onto the bed carefully, slowly, knees to either side of her hips, fabric bunched in his hand behind her back twisting until it tightened and pulled her head and shoulders back. No resistance or fear or question in this woman of melting metal and desire. With his other hand he gathered scent, painted along her jaw line, cheekbones, down her nose and a long line between her breasts.

He really had nothing more to say except the obvious, nothing but more sun when the sun was out, more rain when the clouds gave way, observations and desires that stood more strongly on their own, but she loved his voice and he loved hers and that was a good enough reason to say things to her.

"Cara, you missed me. So frustrating knowing that if I'd been there, I'd have absolutely no problem getting you into bed. Sleep might have taken a little while…" He bent his head and kissed her, hide of his palm along her throat, along the trail of scent and branching out to the side to slide along her breast. Her breath hitched and her heart hammered loud, that giveaway sound he loved from her. His mouth left hers to her distraught moan from the loss and he smiled, breathed in along the scent at her jaw line and bit down lightly on her throat, not breaking the skin but causing a soft gasp and a little whine from her.

The outside tried to crowd in, thoughts of all the threat and incursions and he set those things aside in each moment, building the fire in this room, in their minds and definitely in their bodies until Reverie and closed distance dispelled the darkness, the missed opportunities, the lost time, the future that wasn't uncertain so much as certainly awful in every direction.

She was near passive and speechless, a tiny bound woman whose mind was spinning with the remnants of her expensive death, the potential dissolution of galactic politics, the honestly perceived threat to her bond that wasn't a threat but was… because Krios had venom and she knew she had to tell Garrus that if she ever crossed that line, it wasn't voluntarily. That's why she had to tell him. Not just honesty but confession of her vulnerability. She had to tell her bond mate that she was a danger, she was in danger, she would walk straight into danger.

He knew that but today was special, unseen dangers crowding in on them not from Reapers but from supposed allies.

She didn't mind that her cat didn't care for her at all. She accepted if her bond mate towered over her and made it impossible for her to see or move. If he tried to get her to talk she'd probably only have gasping 'yes' or 'no' answers unless he asked her about the chemical composition of Reverie and then she'd likely have a dutiful lecture on the subject she could provide between gasps.

She would honestly only be able to manage about 30 seconds conscious joined.

The cat at the door began to yowl as well as scratch and it made Cara laugh, helpless peals. She said "She's not… going to stop…" between giggles.

He realized he was going to have to fix the yowl, inconvenient or not. He said "When a man can't ravage his bond mate in his own home that isn't his home because it was given to his bond mate by someone trying to sleep with her, it's a very weird day."

Cara started to laugh harder and he let go of the fabric, pulled the shirt entirely off her head and down her arms, kissed her and then went to the door, opened it and stared down at the suddenly coy cat, tail twitching, looking at him expectantly. He scooped up the cat and brought her back to the bed, setting her down between them. Cara pet her as Carousel paced in the narrow channel she had, then nudged at his scent ridge again. He looked at Cara, who nodded and said "She demands tribute."

Garrus shook his head and said "This is really not how it's done, Carousel. Cats and humans seem to have no respect for Turian etiquette."

He carefully gathered some scent and painted Carousel's face, three little curves on her forehead, and the cat purred contentedly. "There. You're a Fanning. Don't tell anybody."


	44. Chapter 44

Cara loved Garrus for not only tolerating but accommodating Carousel, who was obnoxious, pushy and imperious. He made friends with the cat, talked to her, let Carousel walk all over him, laughing when her nose and whiskers tickled. They paid attention to the cat, talked to each other and to her about cats mainly, all about Hale and feline lore for about two hours before Carousel decided she'd had her fill of monopolizing them, curled up and fell asleep on his wide chest snuggled next to his sternum blade. He'd transferred her to a chair and then scooped Cara up and carried her to another room, declaring 'Stealth Mission' and failing miserably because Turians are just not that quiet when they move, especially when carrying a shirtless giggling human. Cara happily drowned in the deep affection that always struck her around him, the room filling up with liquid love as she watched him talk to a cat he'd adopted. They'd adopted. She was theirs now. Carousel was difficult and demanded attention and wasn't at all appreciative of it, only stopped yowling when she got it, and Cara loved her so much it didn't make sense.

Garrus commented that the cat was a lot like their careers.

Cara felt goofy and bubbly, restful with him and not having to be hard and defensive or strategically on every toe and feeling she needed to grow more toes to keep up. She couldn't figure out how to say it to him, in a way that didn't seem like an insult. That he made her feel safe, that her shoulders relaxed rather than tensed, that he felt like home.

Wouldn't it be sexier to be tense and dangerous? She didn't feel… sexy… she felt…

She blurted "I love you so much. There's so much of it. It fills up the room you're in."

His mandibles spread wide and then pulled back in tightly. He smiled and it was not sexy either but vulnerable and perfect. She threw her arms around him and held on tight and he stood still for a moment, his crest to her hair as he said a soft "Good."

Yeah. Good. That's how she felt. Weak. Relieved.

That was wrong, right?

She had no idea and didn't want to ask.

She imagined his answer if she said "I don't feel sexy as much as weak, relieved, at home… I'm afraid I'm the wrong woman for you" and whether or not that was like asking him to spend two hours indulging an attention-seeking cat, which he'd already done. She felt she'd asked enough of him, more than enough from him and decided to hear the most Garrus answer she could imagine without asking the question.

'How about you be me for me?'

So she tried to be herself, though she really was used to generating that… without asking him for permission or forgiveness, without forcing him to be polite to her or encouraging or…

So she was kind of a coward but it worked to make the question stop from trying to slip out of her lips, whether or not it was okay that she was who she was, tired and scared.

What mattered was that he made her not scared but much more tired. She was anxious about sex, anxious about the drugs needed to counter Reverie, anxious about everything but too tired to express it, lulled by a warm Turian voice and imperious kitten purrs.

His half hitched smile was warm as he said "When was the last time you weren't exhausted?"

She stalled trying to think of an answer. Her answer was near shy "Without medication?"

He groaned and said "Okay, I'm not that great at human expression but you look tired and you sound tired and I'm guessing you will never admit it."

"I'd say something about that but I think I'm too tired."

"What do you do to relax other than try to solve galactic issues?"

"Nothing, lately. Why? What do you do?"

"Huh. Nothing lately. Answer the question."

"I love baking, and that's self limiting, I will eventually run out of something… sugar, space, appetite… but nothing beats a game for… not exactly relaxation and it's not really something that helps with but causes exhaustion. Strategic simulators."

"So you solve… imaginary galactic issues to relax?"

"Mmmm… yes. I program my own simulations and there's one I'm dying to try but I'm afraid it's going to swallow me for a week. So it's lurking."

"How is that relaxing?"

"Maybe it's just relevant enough without all the pressure. I can do what I love to do without costing real lives. And I think the most therapeutic part of it is… I can turn it off or pause it and it stays that way."

"Huh. Makes Cara sense. I guess I can relate. I used to relax by cleaning guns."

"Really?"

"Yeah, it's not the same as a Councilor. I mean, I keep my workspace clear but tidying a stylus and putting my desk in order isn't really precision work."

"Short hobby. Is there anything we can do together? My simulations would likely bore you. It would cure exhaustion in you by making you fall asleep. I get tied up in the minutiae of streamlining supply lines… and that's probably less interesting than watching someone clean their desk or their guns."

He said drily, mock offended "My guns are fascinating."

She laughed "You know, I shoot them but I don't like them. Cleaning them for me is just a chore. I always feel like a failure when I have to use my gun, that I've failed some step along the way to avoid conflict. It's really Sun Tzu – 'The Art of War' – 'The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.'"

"Don't your simulations include fighting?"

"Yeah, but I prefer diplomacy in a way, or spying… and that's some of the simulation. So yeah, I love that you became Councilor not in a bloody coup but in an information avalanche. That was a real win."

"Tell you what… we've both done your job, if you'd like, take a look at my job and see what you'd want to do with that. It almost sounds like you're politely pointing out that we can't cook together because we can't eat each other's food and what fascinates us bores the other?"

"Huh. I didn't… it does sound that way though? I'd love to know more about your work, I really would. Much more fascinating than guns, all the alpacas and such."

"Let's give that a try, because otherwise all we've got is sex, huh?"

"I'm… not knocking that aspect of our relationship! Just trying to find a clothed alternative?"

"We're good at pet care."

"We're great at pet care. Thank you for that."

"You're welcome."

She said quietly "I think I'm just not good at the social thing. There's a… term about kids who don't socialize well… 'parallel play' – it's a normal stage of development but some disorders are spotted when a milestone isn't reached… where a kid just does something on their own and can't cooperate. I'm afraid I'm that kid… even as an adult. I need to move on to cooperative play, which should have happened around my fifth birthday. I can… I just get easily bored. I don't want to?"

"What's the game you play with Thane?"

"Pon-Ifa."

"Want to teach me that?"

She grinned and said "No. I'd murder you. Do you want to teach me hand to hand combat?"

He laughed and said "Uh… yeah, point to you. Okay, so we find something we're both vaguely interested in, not obsessed by so one of us doesn't go spinning off into parallel play territory… we did it with the cat. And remember. Kids. Home. Should keep us busy. In the meantime you can educate yourself on real supply lines, I've got that going for me. Once people stop trying to kill us…"

"Do you think that's ever going to happen?"

"Not really."

"Yeah, me either. It's exhausting and I'm really terrified and disappointed… sad. I'm sad that Salarians are mean. I'm sad and I shouldn't be. I should expect it. I'm not good at people, I'm afraid I'm… I'm afraid I'm doing it wrong. Doing everything wrong. I got myself and you into galactic politics, I ask too much, I can't deliver. My parents were always so calm and I can't be that, I can only act like that. I'm sorry if I'm doing bond mate wrong. I'm sure I'm doing bond mate wrong. Now people know Shepard's a fraud. You know I'm a fraud. I'm so sorry."

He looked at her with eyes a little bit narrowed through this and then said "Is this some human thing I don't know? If we're talking inadequacies, I've got them, but it's so un-Turian to talk about them."

She shook her head, panicked "I don't know. I don't know that answer either. I don't know everything."

"Except when you do."

"Yeah, except then."

"You know a lot."

"Facts. I know facts!"

"You do great things with facts. Okay. So it's a Cara thing. Do you want me to be understanding, reassuring? Do I offer help, do I sympathize, and my personal favorite, do I kiss you until you stop saying crazy things?"

"I don't know. I'm crazy. You should know I'm crazy. I'm a fraud and you deserve better and trying to be honest about everything… this is probably why I don't. I'm a mess. I should be better."

"Well… I've done the understanding and reassuring thing. That might sound like I'm falsely supportive, another Turian thing I should be careful about. I'm not sure I can help. I'm a little hurt you didn't jump straight for the kissing thing…"

"See? I'm doing it wrong."

"Seems my only sane response is to tell you this whole bond thing is over, I made a mistake, and you're broken and crazy? This is not me saying that, this is me saying it sounds like you want to give me the opportunity to say that."

"Yes! You should… man, the Salarians should be able to reverse bond. I'm mad at them for another reason."

"And is this about Thane, you being free, you could be with him?"

"What? No! No. I shouldn't be with anybody. I should be a devolving mess on my own. That's how missions get done."

"So… I deserve better, you deserve worse?"

"I deserve… oh… I don't even know. I should be sexy and strong and supportive. I'm exhausted and sad and…"

"And pushing me away… because you think I deserve better."

"It's for your own good and I don't want that even a little. Not even a little, Garrus. For your own good you should be far away and I'm here sucking the…"

"Don't say sucking."

She laughed and ended up giggling helplessly against his shoulder "Did I mention I'm bad at this?"

"Yes. And I can see that."

"How are you so calm?"

"I'm mostly faking it. I'm terrified. You're tiny and vulnerable and about to explode and you're a human who has choices and I'm a Turian who has made mine."

"I've made mine, I just think you deserve better."

"You're probably right. You make some good points. So I should be bonded to a sexy, strong and supportive Turian woman who understands me and gets me what I need?"

"Yes. I don't like her very much but… yes. I really don't like her. That's petty. I should appreciate her because she makes you happy. I just make you…"

"You have no idea what you're talking about at this point, it's just incoherent babble, isn't it?"

"Isn't it always?!"

"Not arguing with you while you manage both sides is a unique experience. But I've become a career politician so let me take a crack at Cara speak…"

"Garrus… why did you bond with me?"

"Stop interrupting."

"Answer. I have no idea."

"I believe the vaguely sane Turian has the floor. I say this with love. Shut up."

"I didn't really hear that with love…"

"Because your brain's not processing sense right now but you're expressing emotional chaos."

"And you deserve…"

"Shut up."

"No."

"I bet if I told you to go ahead and vent you'd be quiet."

"…maybe."

"You sure you don't want to do that hand to hand thing?"

"No. Maybe. If you punch me really hard in the right spot this stops."

"I think you're sad and angry."

"I don't get angry."

"Yes, you do. You just don't know what to do with it and clearly neither do I because your angry comes out as sad, most people's sad comes out as angry."

"That makes no sense."

"Thane's out right now potentially about to kill a Councilor and you can't stop him. Helplessness on top of it all."

"No. I don't get angry."

"Looks like I don't get angry either, but I do."

"At me?"

"All the time. Right now."

"See?! I told you."

"So you were right? Cara, your parents were calm all the time because they were dealing with… Mindoir. Being angry, sad, helpless… yeah, it's Un-Turian but if you were in a room by yourself right now you'd cry yourself to sleep?"

"I'm sick of crying."

"And the hand to hand or kissing things are not helpful because?"

"That's very Turian but for me… I don't want to get my… stuff… all over you."

He laughed and tilted his head back until his fringe scraped on the headboard of the bed. "I'm your bond mate, you're supposed to get your stuff all over me."

"It should be better stuff."

"Yeah. Maybe. I'm probably supposed to say it's okay, it's fine, we know you've cried yourself to sleep in my arms… so all of this is… the Turian way of stress relief is not going to work for you? You don't know how to tell me you don't want to have sex, do you?"

She blinked, having not thought about it like that at all "I do."

"You don't."

"I DO. I'm just not good at it."

"I should go find that Turian lady, the one you don't like."

"Maybe Russ."

"That would be something."

"I'm sorry I'm crazy."

"I want to tell you it's okay but it's really not, not with you, so I'll just say… you're tired, you're inexperienced, you're scared, you've got the Cara beginnings of anger."

"Know why I won't shoot stuff?"

"Do you?"

"Wrong target. Feels wrong. Target practice I can understand because it's developing a skill, but shooting something or hitting something that… isn't the right target… makes me feel like I'm wasting my time and misdirecting my emotions."

"You just explained my entire culture and biological dilemma."

"No, I've got to be wrong. Everyone else does it."

"But it is the wrong target. So if I have sex with you…"

"Which doesn't seem likely."

"You're not funny. So in your mind… oh. Huh. Haven't looked at it like that."

"Like what?"

"You think I chose you for the wrong reasons and have to sustain a relationship based on no choices, and my expression of love and sex is… compulsory. You think I have the wrong target."

"I've told you that over and over!"

"Yeah, but you hadn't devalued my entire culture first."

"Sorry."

"No, no. Once again, you're trying to protect me."

"I am not."

"Yes. You're trying to protect me from contact with the crazy lady."

"Well… when you put it that way it does sound like a good idea."

"It's the same idea!"

"This time with extra crazy."

"No, it's the same exact idea. You're going to try to protect me from the mistake of my birth, the mistake of… every mistake. You. You think you're a mistake I made."

"Because I am… it's not your fault."

"We keep having the same conversation. It comes back to protecting me. When do I get the opportunity to protect you?"

"You shouldn't have to."

"You're an idiot."

"This is what I'm telling you!"

"I know, and you're right. This is hard, Cara, you are allowed to be exhausted. You're even allowed to be crazy. You are not allowed to isolate yourself to contain the exhaustion and crazy. Every now and again you need to give me enough information to make the right choices. Every now and again I get to protect you."

"That should only happen if I screw up. Sun Tzu. Battles. I can't… I can't get it wrong. I've screwed up, I need to figure out how, fix it. I don't know how."

"Technically for all this I'm the wrong target."

"You're not the target, you're an objective."

"Oh hell… I'm an escort mission."

Cara laughed and said in horrified shock "I hate those. I hate those so much."

"They're not in your simulations?"

"No. I want to win, not kill the hostage for noncompliance and wasting my time."

"You're misapplying strategy to a bond."

"That seems obvious… but how?"

"You're trying to use your intellect to solve an emotional issue. Plus I'm insulted. I don't want to be an objective."

"I need to bring down the Salarian Union before an assassination, which seems impossible. I need to stop Collectors… actually I think I have that figured out. I need to stop Reapers. Much harder. I need to… be honest with my bond mate and I'm not good at that."

"You're good at honesty, just not processing emotion. Yet. Let me help. You'll get better."

"Now you have an objective?"

"Operation: Clothed Cooperative Play."

She laughed "I love you so much."

"I love you too. Here are a few tools. If you don't want to have sex, tell me so."

"I do. I just don't want… the drugs that go with it."

"Yeah. I can understand that. Right now, I'll say it. Let's not have sex. How about you get some sleep."

"It's still not clothed cooperative play, my shirt's gone."

"We'll get there someday, virce. For now we dig an emotional foxhole."

"Vircehole."

"For now we dig a vircehole and wait until the exhaustion resolves. Sleep. Please. Don't worry about me or my choices, objectives or escorting. Particularly not protecting me. I'll be okay. So will you. You're going to wake up embarrassed as hell though."

"Sex then?"

"Deal."

"For now working model is – you're awful at hello because you're terrified of goodbye."

"Thank you for being smart at me."

"You're welcome, virce."

"I mean it about the sex thing."

"So do I."


	45. Chapter 45

Children and pets were going to be the death of Thane.

Being an assassin was a careful balance of research and influence, patience and chaos. No matter how many variables he managed to define, even simple jobs could be thrown into chaos. He was endeavoring to combine two separate issues into one. He would redirect reporters who were attempting to determine the state of Cara's bond, several of whom had been observed staking out the apartment.

These things could be accomplished fairly easily, provide compulsion to turn reporters from interest in Commander Shepard into interest in the Salarian Union's dealings, reversing the flow of pressure and providing an elegant solution to the direction of interest and information.

Reporters were in general stubborn, single-minded creatures and he did not wish to attempt lucid blackmail or threats with most. That would accomplish making a reporter feel as though they were truly onto something, often making them push harder. They were now part of the story. Personal fame in a byline through having their lives threatened would extend speculation into a well-viewed series of reports on speculation regarding who would want to pressure innocent reporters.

It would be impossible to distract from Cara's and Vakarian's bond otherwise with the threat of the contract and the Salarian interest in undermining her. He must abandon attempts at public relationship possibly indefinitely now that there was a potential risk to her life from exposure. Unfortunate but necessary.

He had done what research he could on the reporters in question and most were a simple issue of breaking in, drugging them and convincing them that they had a sudden change of heart.

There were quite a few reporters.

It had gone well, he was on his fourth such mission when the chaotic addition of a niece sleeping over for the night with an exuberant pet varren…

Who allows a child a pet varren?

An exuberant pet varren…

Had interrupted his attempts.

A knock on the door, a slow opening, a young child in a nightdress dwarfed by a glowing blue guardian with fangs.

"Aunt Misa?"

Very large fangs.

'Aunt Misa' was a reporter and fortunately Thane had already quietly convinced her that she was much more interested in Salarian gossip and intrigue than she was in Commander Shepard and he was nearly on his way out. He could kill the child and the varren but he experienced a moment of hesitation. He did not look like himself, he could not be identified. He only had to extract himself from the location. Death of a small curious child was not a part of his mission and the imagined referred guilt of Cara being responsible for that outcome made it impossible to consider. Misavre herself was drugged and down.

This was close quarters.

It was a very exuberant varren. Thane had to dive to attempt to evade it, lift the child off the threshhold, earning himself a bite to the thigh. They were large fangs, the leather punctured but fortunately the position guarding against the jaws closing or tearing, a glancing bite.

Fortunately varren could not open doors but could snarl and scratch as a small child watched wide eyed.

DNA. They could sample blood for DNA if he allowed the varren to drip blood from glowing blue jaws. His profile wasn't available and he could hack it if necessary later but it was a risk he should not take, a trail he should not blaze. Thane sighed, addressed the child and asked her what her name was.

"I'm not supposed to tell strangers." Small pouting defiance.

"You are right. I am a stranger. You are a smart girl and I apologize for asking. I have no right to your name. Your aunt is well. I did not hurt her. I will not hurt you. I do not wish to hurt your varren."

She giggled "She bit you."

"Yes, she did. I must make sure none of my blood remains."

"Why?"

"Because they could determine who I am."

"Why?"

"Because when your Aunt Misa wakes up you will tell her this story."

"It's funny!"

"Yes. You can tell your Aunt Misa this story but she should not be able to find me."

"'Cause you're a bad guy."

"Yes."

She narrowed her eyes. Apparently this child accustomed to big fangs liked him as well. "You're pretty!" Her little hands moved over his face and he smiled at her.

"Whatever your name is, little one, I am pleased to make your acquaintance."

She narrowed her eyes again, childish guile and then she said slowly "My name is Kimin. What's yours?"

"Kimin, are you attempting to trick me into me telling you my name?"

She grinned again "Yes!"

"That deserves an answer for your efforts, you may call me Benis."

She was thrilled with her coup. "Hi Benis!"

"Hello, Kimin."

"You're fun."

"And pretty. Thank you. I do not wish to hurt your varren."

"She'll listen to me."

"All right, Kimin." The scratching and snarling was at high pitch. "I only wish to clean up if there is a mess. I do not wish to leave a mess for your aunt Misa."

She nodded solemnly and then said in a surprisingly stern voice "Kerplunk, DOWN."

The scratching and snarling stopped after one last vicious dig and a whimper.

So he found himself inspecting slavering jaws that seemed to hold no blood, no drops remaining, a steady growl from her throat until Kimin told her sternly "Kerplunk, no…" with some exasperation in her voice, until the varren whined and licked at her hand. She whispered "You're supposed to listen, if you don't listen we're gonna get in trouble. You know what mom said." She looked forlorn, varren slumped with her in sympathy to her tone of voice.

Thane was likely not Kerplunk's first exuberant victim.

No drops of blood. Misa would sleep for a few hours. Puncture wounds on his thigh but blood contained.

Kimin asked him anxiously "You won't tell my mom? If you don't tell my mom she bit you, I won't tell aunt Misa you were here. Please?"

"I will not tell your mother and you need not make a bargain. You may tell your aunt what you wish. She is in no danger from me. I will not be returning. Though I will regret not being able to make your acquaintance at a later date, Kimin."

"I could give you my Omni Tool 'quence!"

Another moment of hesitation, unable to tell this child that her correspondence was inappropriate, as being inappropriate seemed to be a cherished dream of hers and he did not wish to be rude. "I would be honored, Kimin." He gave her a standalone sequence that would not lead to him but if she did wish to correspond, he would do so.

Chaos.

Chaos in the form of children and pets and a solemn bow farewell to a lovely child who turned to whisper reassuringly to her varren.

He believed he was finished for the evening, renting a hotel room in order to treat a varren bite, grateful that he would not be telling this story to anyone, that Drell did not form scars from such things.

Ree saw.

Ree laughed.

He found himself smiling and saying sternly "It is not at all funny."

Ree laughed harder.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Cara woke up alone, vaguely relieved and vaguely disappointed.

She should be less vague.

She padded downstairs, found Garrus in the kitchen. He smiled at her and that was her sunrise. A good day begun. She smiled back. He walked to her, cradled her in a hug and pressed his crest to her forehead, said "Good morning, love."

"Morning."

He held up a finger and pulled a plate out of the stove, said "Talking about cooking made me want to try it. Here." He put the warmed plate down at the table and beamed at her, looked at her expectantly.

She smiled. It looked like her first try at breakfast when she was what…four? Well, no, she'd never… she'd never been this bad. What looked like eggs… maybe… cooked down into a vague hockey puck, brown on one side and slightly raw on the other, and what looked like… eggshells through it. Dry, burned toast. She grinned and said "Thank you!" and took a bite.

Oh… and on top of that it seemed he'd used sugar instead of salt. He watched her expectantly and she smiled and nodded "Thank you, Garrus!"

His eyes narrowed and she went to take another bite and his hand closed over hers. He said "Spirits, stop. That's a… you weren't supposed to eat it. For the… Cara… I did…"

"You did what?"

"Everything wrong. You know, burned, raw, sugar… eggshells? Does it really… it was a joke!" He slid the plate away and muttered "No sense of humor. Wasted on you. You think I'm that incompetent?"

She picked some shell off her tongue "I thought it was a good…first try?"

He sighed and pulled another plate out of the oven "No. This is a good first try. I was laughing for half an hour and you ruined it."

It looked like perfect scrambled eggs and buttered toast.

She pressed her lips together and said "I feel I do not deserve the good eggs."

He sighed "Now I'm not even sure they're the good eggs, you're going to say they're good no matter what."

"Toast isn't burned!"

Garrus sighed, leaned against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest.

She grinned "Thank you for frustrated and irritated eggs."

He sighed "You're welcome."

"I don't understand why feeding someone burned, raw, crunchy and sweet eggs is funny."

"I don't understand why you'd eat them."

"Because you made me eggs!"

"I don't think I can explain that kind of funny. You were supposed to make fun of me."

"Why?"

"I just said I don't think I can explain."

"Was this the beginning of an intended prank war?"

"Maybe."

"I never prank."

"Obviously."

"One less thing we can do together?"

"Unless you make me a plate of Turian food that's burned and acid etched."

"Doesn't sound like me. Eggs are good."

"You're probably lying."

"So… we can't win unless we're shooting something?"

"Which… I can't do!"

"So we can't win."

"We still have the sex thing."

She said enthusiastically "Yeah we do!"

He said drily "And it's fine now because I drugged your eggs."

She spit out a mouthful "WHAT?"

He laughed and said "I'm KIDDING."

"You have the worst sense of humor."

"Look, maybe I can't win, but that doesn't mean I can't try and that I can't have fun."

She smiled, put her head down and ate the rest of breakfast. It was good. He remembered to salt the eggs. He moved to the side of her chair, crouched down until his head was level with hers and said "I think I have a solution to us not winning."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Apologize for not being a perfect bond mate." He looked stern and steady.

She said "I'm sorry I'm not a perfect bond mate."

"You're forgiven. Now don't say it again. Don't think it again. Stop describing yourself as a certain type of bond mate and realize… you're the only bond mate. No adjectives required."

She nodded solemnly.

"I'll ask if I want you to apologize for something. Right now I want to be there with you and I can't and I'm frustrated. Worry if I suddenly say 'Yeah, you know, I've got too much paperwork, can't be there. Can't come up with a stupid idea like making crappy eggs for you.'"

She pressed her lips together and wanted to cry with relief, but she really was… sick of crying. "Okay."

"Tell me you're sorry you won't let me on your stupid ship."

"I'm sorry I won't let you on my ship. She's not stupid. You owe EDI an apology."

He laughed and said "Forgiven. For now. We'll fix it. Don't die. If you die, I WILL be asking for an apology."

"Okay."

"Talk to me. Don't worry about talking to me. Don't apologize about talking to me or thinking things. I can't keep track and you think fifty things at once and I can't keep up, but I can be there. Help me with my work. Think about what you want to name kids."

"Okay."

"Now I'm gonna do that ravage thing the cat wouldn't let me do. Stand up and come along quietly."

"Okay."

"This part isn't a prank."

"Oh good."

"What about here on the table?"

"What? No!"

"Why?"

"It's… a table. What is it with you and tables?"

"Say you're sorry that you're no fun."

"I'm sorry I'm no fun."

"On the floor?"

"No."

"I like doors, any of the doors?"

"NO. Bed."

He lifted her out of the chair and started upstairs, saying thoughtfully "A bed without a cat in it."

"If we can manage."

"We're wily. Sometimes."

"You're a very polite ravager."

"Oh come on now, say you're sorry about that."

"But I'm not sorry."

"Say… you're sorry."

"I'm sorry."

"I love this. See, it's all going to work out."

"I love you."

"I love you, Cara. Let me decide how much."

"Yes, sir."

"I love this. It's like I have actual authority."

She giggled and then he kissed her, she closed her eyes, and she loved this, him, here, them.


	46. Chapter 46

Cara really did have the Collector thing all figured out. The Salarian issue was a sideline. She felt safe enough in the apartment. She did address the Council about Krogan, escorted there and back fully armed and armored.

Nobody shot at her. She credited Thane, who she had not seen in days, but who had been in touch with her, Liara and Garrus separately and together regarding progress on Salarian interests and the approaches toward destabilizing them.

Upon further reflection and during a conference with the four of them, her on Garrus's lap, she had said "If the Salarians are afraid of my influence, then let me make it real. I'll give my address and I'll tell the Council what I need and I'll get it. I'll tell them about the Krogan, I'll tell them about the Collectors. I'll make it public. They won't need to be afraid of potential influence any longer because it will be something unstoppable. Eliminate me, eliminate Garrus, eliminate Anderson and Tevos? They'd have to do all of that, and then control all replacements, with everyone aware that it was the Salarians that did it because they were the only ones that would benefit from such a thing. I'll make it clear in the address. You three make it clear in political, influential and media outlets. I have power. I know the Salarians are after me. I know why. I won't go after them. I'm going after what I'm supposed to go after and I have full Council support. I will have Krogan support. So we put it out there. I put it out there, full Shepard regalia. I need to focus on Collectors, I'll stay safe in the apartment. The Normandy's safe. I'm sure I don't have to do a thing to protect myself, you three have it covered, huh?"

Smile from Thane.

Solemn nod from Liara.

Squeeze from Garrus. "Yup."

"Thank you."

So… tentative win. Garrus had informed the Council members of the content of the briefing. It was pageantry on all sides, a seemingly united front but with daggers drawn, the edge glittering but the point concealed. Garrus had also alerted Anderson and Tevos to Salarian scheming and there was a distinct chill toward the Salarian, who gave none of the overt signs of contempt that he had been accustomed to giving.

She ended her informative and calm briefing about the Krogan by saying "We have a solution to the issue of the Collectors. We are going to need several teams to execute arrangement of tracking and isolating future Collector vessels and then capture of each. There are Collector vessels for each species. We will be able to find and claim those ships, return as many people as possible to their homes, as we did with Turians at Trireme. Once the vessels are tracked and taken, we will take them through the Omega Relay. We will dock at the main base. There we will rescue as many people from as many species as possible and end the threat the Collectors pose to all of us. Thank you for your cooperation."

That should give them something to chew on.

She didn't tell anybody what she was planning to do to definitively end the Collector threat. She had gotten the idea from the Bahak system, an asteroid directed toward the Mass Effect relay. That system had been destroyed and the relay was no longer functional.

So…

She was going to set a Collector ship on course to collide with the relay after they evacuated the main base, which they knew about ahead of time due to the raided Collector data.

The Salarian issue in comparison was a distraction and she shunted off that to Garrus, Liara and Thane because she was going to be busy coordinating and setting scouts, arraying the resources given to her by the Council unanimously. Every relay near colonists needed to be monitored, they needed to be able to scramble. A Collector ship could be much more easily hijacked than the last time with a method she had developed with EDI. Systems could be frozen in the same way EDI had done it prior, now with EDI also unshackled and on a Collector ship of her own, transferring some of herself into the Collector ship and from there it was easy to slide into the data stream of another Collector ship.

A Trojan EDI.

Apparently the Collector ship's computing system was roomy and… fun. EDI loved the Collector space, soaked in the tech. EDI and Cara had spent a lot of time talking about sneaky ways to bring down a Collector ship, creating a fleet of those ships and then ending the Collectors. She could see to the end there. It was possible, it was probable, and it would work. Much higher possibility of excellent outcome than she was used to, cumulatively satisfying in the Sun Tzu sense because she wouldn't need to fight or risk lives for the most part.

She would take life. Unfortunately all of the Collectors they had captured were drones without will or intellect. Harbinger had vacated and there was no means of negotiation. No intelligence, no way to communicate, no platform of cooperation. Rather than physically fight their way through as they had to do in the first ship, the lives of the Collectors would be eradicated through introducing nerve gas. The gas would paralyze Collectors and then they would be vented into space, unable to secure themselves. Painless. She had experienced death in vacuum, it had not been painless. She could not come up with a better way and it was the best way to save sentient lives that were then going to take control of the ship and rescue those taken. The Collector ships had huge stored sources of this gas and the capacity to manufacture more at any time; it was what was circulated in the pods to keep their harvest in place. Anybody in isolated pods would be protected. Anybody out in the main spaces of the ship would be vulnerable.

She wished she could save them. EDI had postulated that they were the genetic descendants of Protheans, but there was nothing remaining of them to communicate with. They had been slaves for 50,000 years.

Cara had been very careful to ensure that each Collector in custody was put to death painlessly and the bodies disintegrated so that no body or parts was taken for any experimentation. They had endured enough. She spoke Prothean prayers she had learned from Liara on the day of their execution.

Cara found she still had some things to cry about, but they were unrelated to her at the moment.

She had a balance of automated release of Reverie medication that Dr. Chakwas titrated for her based on readings on her Omni Tool. Reverie wasn't anywhere near as disruptive, painful or frightening as it had been before in withdrawal so she was able to ease into a cycle of days spent scheming and planning, nights with Garrus's warm smile and strong arms, humor and love.

Switching from their lack of potential domesticity to her being involved in his work and fascinated, they both worked on Salarian issues, parceling out bits of hacked information translated into a media approach, Thane having… apparently convinced… several reporters to change tacks in their coverage. The Salarian Union was facing having media coverage of a lot of unsavory dealings.

Garrus was able to hand the information directly to Turian reporters.

Valern was on the run and the Union on the defensive. More and more reporters were being given bits and pieces, new reporters were finding things on their own.

Forewarned and forearmed about the death threat, after the immediate shock of 'someone that shouldn't want me dead wants me dead' had worn off, she had stopped worrying about it so much. She had a sense of poised readiness, beginning to execute a leapfrogging attack on Collectors, EDI familiar with the Collector ship alone, able to hijack other vessels on her own.

Cara… could stay on the Citadel safe in nerd heaven near her bond mate as the plan carried forward.

It was elegant and intricate and Cara enjoyed the Pon-Ifa sense of inevitable setup and execution. All the pieces were arrayed and were moving in.

She was happy.

Really, really happy.

Garrus had a lot to do with that, but so did setting up strategic solutions to issues where she did not need a gun, where she discussed it in Garrus's lap and where Thane was not murdering a Councilor.

Yet.

What she needed now was time, and she was going to have that, safe in Turian arms while they talked about anything and everything, Carousel now comfortably used to falling asleep on Garrus's shoulder, obscuring a scent patch with smug ownership.

A week in they got their first sighting of a Collector ship at a relay, Trojan EDI in her Collector ship suit sent out to a Drell colony, Vimisen.

Then bloodlessly they had a second Collector ship, EDI having taken the ship off the ground and into space, venting the Collectors and preserving 80,081 viable Drell lives on board.

EDI was smug and complain-bragged that it was too easy.

Cara was so proud.

She saw Thane for the first time the day after. He wasn't there and then he was. She had been studying and absorbed and then let out a surprised squeak as he lifted her from the couch, swept her into a hug, fierce and sudden with his arms wrapped around her and his lips in her hair.

"Thank you, Lasam, for the lives of my people."

"You're welcome."

He slid her down his body to the floor, her legs trembling and feet unsteady. One arm of his remained around her waist and he held her chin between envenomed fingers, her wide palm under her jaw. She swallowed. Hard.

Swear word.

"Lasam, I made you a promise. I wish to break it. I wish for you to break it with me."

She swallowed again "What promise?"

"I told you I would return to Irikah at the Shores. Now… I cannot find my way there. I know she understands, she is with me. And I am with you. Tell me if you have promised Vakarian yourself after you die."

"If I… what? This IS… after I've died."

He didn't laugh but his lips twitched and settled into determination, leaning over her and bending her back "Lasam. Cara. Will you meet him? Is there a Turian heaven, a Turian Shores? I know only of their Spirits, not of their souls. Humans have souls, as do Drell, meeting places. Have you promised yourself?"

"I… No. I don't remember being dead. I am working on the premise that once I am… It's over. I'm over."

"I refuse to accept that."

"You have the Shores. You have Irikah. You have Kolyat."

"I have you. I have this chance. If you have made no promise, then I will ask. You asked me to keep my promise to my wife, that you would not consider me as a mate because she exists, she waits. But she would want my happiness. You wished for me to have peace with my family and I do. I have. But you… are also my family, Lasam, in truth. I can always have them in my heart, full in their roles and known as loved. You… I wish for you to be my future once your present is past. There is a Drell myth, of Manipar. Have you heard of it?"

She was shaking, stunned, just that little bit of venom from his hand making her want to hear the story, making her want to say yes. She leaned toward yes but realized it was no. She did not know of Manipar. "No. What are they?" Once more his temptations were impossible to resist as he skimmed the edges of the denied, caressing fingers along boundaries, not an invasion but an invitation.

"Drell souls. They live and die in pairs. They do not go to the Shores when they die, but are reborn over and over, together, to find each other. They choose mortality rather than immortality, together. Humans also have this idea; reincarnation. We are much alike in Spirit in many ways. So many ways, Cara. Now that Rakhana is gone the Manipar are lost, they cannot find Drell women who are with child to imbue with Spirit. Now they walk the poisoned sand, seeking each other, without bodies, without eyes, and they will never find the Shores, never find each other. Could that be like us, Lasam? You come from a place with different Gods, you have no Shores, and I do not wish to go there without you. Perhaps we have found a way through the storm and the poison to each other, off Rakhana, bearing the scars of other worlds. I did not find you before you were pledged. I will wander, I will wait, but I ask you, Lasam… consider your love for Drell things, your love of our history, your love of me, your obsession and mastery of Pon-Ifa at such a young age and now you being the savior of so many Drell lives. You died and you have returned. Is it possible you are a Manipar… my Manipar? That I am yours? I found Irikah in my search, you found Garrus. We can still find each other again with another shift of the dunes. We lost each other, you wandered far to find a place with life, a human woman to fill with Spirit. I could return, begin again, with a body and a mind without sin. I would be worthy. I would find you."

She could believe she was a paired soul, hungry and wandering until she found him. It felt like an echo of that image of the Manipar stumbling in the sand, some impossible moment where her body and mind had been certain she'd reject any offer until this exact moment, his hands, his voice like keys to locks, a click and a fall and a rush of air, maybe a remembered desert wind. It did feel like a choice, a destiny and something they might have done together somehow, the faith and determination overarching not just one life but many. She'd been so many people, maybe she could be different people because she'd lived over and over with him and she remembered different selves.

It was calming, almost joyous, to consider having had a fulfilled life with a bond mate and then to be free to seek Thane, to find him, to have Garrus in her heart as Thane had Irikah, somehow souls in iterations joining together, meeting, becoming in Drell words Whole and along a chosen and fated Path.

All together. All the reasons they could not be together gone, forgiveness and promise rediscovered after new truths forged.

If… she believed in Irikah waiting, she must believe in Irikah forgiving. She did believe Thane deserved forgiveness and to choose his own Path forward.

If she believed in the Shores, she must believe in this chance. She could not have it both ways, ask him to keep to a given bond when released, ask him to uphold the imaginary she did not honor.

She did honor it.

She wanted to honor it.

She wanted her parents to be real, wanted them to be together.

Wanted herself and Thane to pass through a barrier and reform somehow in a way that was free and clear of all other promises made after having kept faith with them. With Garrus and Irikah with them, Russ and Kolyat, Liara… either in hearts and minds or in new and unrecognized bodies except to look into eyes and to know… that this person mattered, this person meant something out of all the potential people, all the potential grains of sand that had been searched. Here. Now. This person. This matters.

Otherwise, how many chances would they get to see before they passed each other and wandered a planet's length of sorrow and pain before they saw each other again? All they needed to do was to see each other now, recognize each other. Give each other permission to remember, to see. He knew they had, this was a formality, an invitation to that calm joy. Love could multiply rather than restrict.

She didn't… believe it… but it felt close to a truth. Beyond the poetry, it was a chance, venom slick and dreaming. Much less than a 0.1% chance of coming true, but no investment other than hope that if they came back, if it was true, that each step on burning sand could have a companion, a meaning, a myth and a truth to be found. They were so much alike, the passing of quiet understanding in gesture and eyes, finding every way to be together, eyes over a board and shared smiles, schemes and devious knowing of the recursive nature of fate, the twisted Path and the true-not-true of being together.

She did love him, beyond a doubt. She did want him.

His lips pressed to her ear, his voice something new with the colors of love blending with the colors of Spirit, a Manipar recognizing his mate. Spirit made flesh. "I want you, Lasam, never doubt. I will want you until I die. Then if you bid me, I will seek a woman whose child needs a spark of Spirit, and I will be reborn, I will struggle to live, I will find you again. Would you, have you forsaken the Shores for me? Could you be a Drell soul seeking eternity with wandering eyes? Would you, have you sacrificed eternity at peace for endless lives spent searching? I cannot say for certain that I have, but I would, Lasam. I would for you. I would be your Manipar if you would be mine. Would you, have you claimed me as your destiny, not once or sometimes faltering as now but always renewed in potential? Could it be we have wandered since Rakhana's fall, until we found our way? We would have eternity. We would try again, and again, until we make the sand shift our way. Could you, have you looked beyond the Shores as I have, have you and will you take your Drell soul once the time of your Turian mate and your human body passes, seeking the sand with my footsteps at your side? When I first saw you I saw Siha. My Gods honor you for what you've done for me, for what you've done for my people. Your people. Our people. They are your Gods, I know it. If we do not belong together now, we will belong together later. We might have belonged to each other before. Eternity is long, Lasam, and I would not rest until I found you. Neither of us were born on the planets our species claimed. Lost and lonely, tested and taken. My footsteps will walk with yours for this lifetime no matter your answer. I am yours. You might be mine if you had the will. I ask that if you linger beyond this life, as is your wont, you search for me. You will not be alone in your search. I will find you. You know me, Lasam. You know my heart. You know I will. It will cost you nothing to say yes, cost your bond mate nothing already promised. It would prove I am forgiven, my Path is clear to choose as my own. I choose you at the end of my life. I wish to begin my new life inspired by your eyes. It would be to me a promise of everything. I will die soon, Lasam, you may die soon. Give me hope."

The image of layered lives and wanted things, myth and moments in an unrecognized but somehow real to them both whirl where it rose like a mirage they could reach if they both believed in it together. It was poetry she wanted. It was something she could give him, as powerful as the idea of Shores or heaven, those things that were seen by, wanted by the soul. Those ideas that guided feet over sand. Ideas that weren't hunger or pain, but were love and hope. He wished to be guided by those things, imbue his Spirit with such things. She didn't want him to step back. Between them was shared real pain, poison, passion, and she only had one answer in her own moment of potential and dreamed-of recognition and blended voice made of myth and venom and a surprised squeak turned to a mirage "Yes."

His breathing was harsh, ragged as he said "Thank you, Cara." His shoulders slumped and his head was on her shoulder, she moved her hand as though to cradle his head but he seemed to melt, falling to his knees, his arms around her hips and his head against her stomach.

She wasn't surprised or shocked. No squeak or worry, understanding the depth of loneliness and call of love seeking an answer, any answer, the answer, the truth, in face of the cruelty of the lengths of thirsty sand. Her fingertips sought the curves of his frill, textured lines between scale, venom on her throat and fingertips, venom not at all the reason why she had said or thought what she had said or thought. They both knew that. It had only made it easier to see the mirage, to say the truth of an imagined hope.

He wanted to know he was wanted, he was loved, and he was.

Enough to fill an eternity.

He stayed on his knees until his breathing evened, until he grew still and the trembling left both of their limbs. His grip on her hips shifted and he stood, lifting her above him until she looked down at his uplifted face, his determination transmuted to patience and appreciation of an ephemeral gift. He slid her down his body again until his lips met her brow, then he set her on her feet and he was gone in a trailing cloud of hallucinatory golden glow.

She tried to ask herself what she had just done but she knew.

She tried to ask herself why she had done it but she knew.

She wasn't Drell even if she might have a Drell soul but she did remember Thane looking at her over Nassana's body, looking at her over a Pon-Ifa board, looking at her over a cup of tea, holding her as pain wracked her body and he whispered comfort and love in her ear. She knew exactly why and what she had done.

She knew what stumbling through sand felt like, did not want to do it again without giving it meaning. She wanted to stumble toward like-minded love.

She was unable to resist a mirage of a tent pitched in the sand under starlight.

Unable to lie about it when asked.

Unable to lie to him. Not about this. Of all the gazes and schemes and devious understanding, there were things holy to them both.

She didn't believe in forever. She believed in him believing in forever, and that he would be loved all of that time.

She spared a moment for prayer to newly adopted Gods "Kalahira, let me be worthy."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Thane retreated from the apartment, afraid to stay because despite his promise, he would press her if he looked in her eyes once more.

From his Ree all he gained was her pour of love, of hope, of wishing to be part of something mystical and eternal. Approval of his finally learning a long-taught and long-wished lesson.

From Kolyat all he imagined was seeing his son speak to Cara, both animated and tumbling over each other in enthusiasm to speak, to share.

Quickly he was in the darkness of one of his retreats, spare and stark. He preferred the dark and in this case even with the light of green eyes refracting through him, he wished for that to be his only light. Inside the door he was on his knees again, prayer and the unwillingness to stand upright.

His breath was shorter, coming shorter every day and his life would not last long. What he lacked was time. He had all the will, all the determination, but he lacked time.

She had given it to him, without question, because he had asked.

Ephemeral and even for her bewildered, she had no use for the afterlife in her logical state, but this was a woman who spoke to her parents, heard their voices every day after their death.

He wished for her to hear his voice. He wished for her to be reborn with the knowledge she was loved, to carry that with faith each day. He wanted that for himself.

Ree would have her Shores and her peace. Thane would have his rebirth and his struggle.

One day he would look into eyes of any color and know she was important, he belonged with her, as he had this time, and he knew they could make it true if it was possible to be true.

He would not allow his soul to die along with his body, as he had once intended, believing himself mourned by no one. He would have been returned to Rakhana to wander the sands alone, denied the Shores, without a mate, only the sand and the poison and the thirst and the time. Then there had been Irikah and Kolyat, there had been a woman with green eyes with hope and she had turned him her way.

If he were reborn as a Drell, would he be able to retain the memory of her? What had he done before to be able to recognize her? Had it been the force of her or had he primed himself to know?

He developed new prayers, new chants, new affirmations.

There is a woman…

Would she be a woman? Would he be a man? It did not matter.

There is a soul.

Maybe she would not have eyes, maybe they would not be Drell. It did not matter.

There is a soul and when you sense them, follow them, lead them, cherish them, love them, for the choices you will make together will be greater than the choices you could make separately. Through them you will be Whole.

It was his new prayer he repeated ardently with shortened breath in the dark, hoping to make whatever impression upon himself possible to carry through forgetting everything else after he died.


	47. Chapter 47

Collector vessels fell to EDI one after the other, with Shepard on the Citadel, remotely doing her research and feeling more smug than she had in a long time. Possibly ever.

Yes, it was only Collectors and they were not Reapers, only relatively mindless minions, but it felt really good to see inter-species camaraderie raised as millions of people from all different species were returned to homes, given homes if none remained to them.

She had seven vessels in nine weeks. Turian, Drell, Hanar, Batarian, Human, Asari and Vorcha.

Okay, there wasn't much in the way of Vorcha camaraderie but she still felt good about it. Nobody deserved to be Collected.

She had sent a polite and clear package of information to Valern with a flow chart of if-then statements and outcomes. She had enough information to excise the Salarian Union's seat and Thane agreed, but she wanted to try to avoid removing them from power if equilibrium could be reached. Stability and continuity without power vacuum was valuable enough to be attempted. It would be best if the Council grew to encompass more sentient species and although she had no plans to push for that, ideally there should be more representation, not less. Added and not subtracted seats.

Maybe not for Vorcha.

She was probably not unbiased on the subject of Batarians. It wasn't likely, fortunately.

So she informed Valern that if… contracts on the life of Commander Shepard or Garrus Vakarian were known to exist…

Then… certain things would happen. Release of even more sensitive classified material as well as very effective investigations into the source of said contracts. A helpful brief was attached on the subject. Other potential things mentioned that could be released such as illegal funding sources, research into the illegal and continued covert uplifting plans.

The fact that they had not recovered a Salarian vessel was not on purpose, they would continue to recover them and no bias against Salarians would take place in Commander Shepard's mission.

If… the Salarian Union stuck to advancing legitimate research, which was an excellent contribution to galactic causes, fully deserving of a Council seat, then there would be no 'then.'

If… the Salarian Union continued to uplift Yahg or any other species, leverage would be brought to bear to oust the Salarians from the Council, seeing as the uplifting of Krogan had been a disastrous affair now requiring reparation.

By the way, a definite 'if' surrounding the sabotage of the attempt to reverse the Genophage definitely applied.

It remained that the Salarians were isolated in their need to seek power and it was now well known only Salarians or Reaper agents would benefit from removing Shepard from her mission or subverting the Krogan… so if those things happened, heavily weighted information hammers would fall.

She was of the opinion (analysis attached) that the uplifting of species was a deeply flawed system, creating pawns from sentient creatures best left to their own paths. Salarians needed to gain allies, not minions. Therefore the human, Turian and Asari Councilors would attempt to treat the Salarian Councilor as an ally, aid all legitimate research generously. For a brief time, as a political olive branch, a ridiculous amount of funding would be available for projects that were aimed toward the purposes of allied technical advances in opposing Reapers, for which the Salarians were best suited and those Salarians removed from uplifting and illegal projects would be offered new well paid and well funded positions.

Scientific Amnesty to be revoked only upon future discovery, past discovery potentially buried if suspended immediately.

If… contracts persisted in Commander Shepard's name or if contracts arrived to target any of the other three Councilors, Vakarian, Anderson or Tevos, there would be no need for a public offering of contract upon Salarian interests, there would be a pre-emptive strike, vaguely implied enough so that it could sound like she'd submit a sharp note of reprimand, but really it involved Thane, who in fact insisted on the offer and the wording. The Salarian Union should do their best to monitor and halt any black ops attempts at power grab, redirecting abundant resources toward ally and not minion as mentioned above.

Of course there was the risk of Valern crying out that he was being blackmailed, but if that was attempted, all Shepard would do would be to point out that it was not blackmail but an attempt at working together, the conditions of a great deal of funding being… don't kill people and don't subjugate other races.

Not his best bet to make it public, in essence complaining that a Council Spectre was attempting to make him… do his job.

She didn't hear back but the contract on her life was withdrawn. Valern addressed the closure of obsolete research and was inspired to provide new direction, which was funded quickly.

Thane was satisfied that the withdrawal of the threat was legitimate but still recommended the highest of security levels, no socializing, no 'fake' public relationship, personal concerns having been outstripped by professional prudence. Thane's lips had twitched and he had said "Far too many things have been deferred until the uncertain future. I mourn the loss of the opportunity but prefer your continued living."

That was nice considering she was supposed to meet up with him after and thankfully he hadn't taken that as a suicide pact.

Oh, that was a terrifying thought, don't think that.

She was pretty sure that if he killed her to move things along, he was aware she might object.

Unless she didn't remember.

Oh, Manipar were complicated.

She didn't bring it up because she didn't want to give him any belated ideas and took the 'continued living' statement as a hopeful sign. She had leaned up on tip toe and kissed at his frill with a 'thank you' and his palm had come to the back of her head, family and warmth.

Garrus had muttered 'Thank the Spirits' at the death of the 'fake' relationship that never really made it to the light of day then followed up with "He's moving out of your quarters?"

"Got that covered, yes."

"Now?"

"Soon."

"I like now more."

"I know, but I can deliver soon."

Cara was grateful for no high heels. Everyone was reasonably happy and Thane was able to get some sleep by latest report.

The Collector ships were refitted to house and accommodate her own forces and the push to the Collector base was ready to go, once again she hadn't left her apartment. She felt…stable, supported, optimistic and spent her time split between Kolyat, Thane, Kolyat and Thane, Garrus, Garrus and Russ.

Garrus and Cara was her favorite combination.

And study, of course study, moving on from the relatively resolved Salarian issue to all things Collector and several things Sooth and Geth, because after the Collectors that came next.

Councilor Vakarian was just as optimistic as she was about the push to the Collectors so asked repeatedly, at least once an hour for a bunk on the Normandy or more precisely a bunk, HER bunk, THEIR bunk on whatever Collector ship she was manning on her way into the base. There was a flood of volunteer, Council race and rescued race forces set to fill those vessels.

He'd kiss the back of her neck. "Avah, let me go with you."

"No."

She didn't stop answering that way.

He didn't stop asking. Fortunately he let her sleep without waking her by the hour or she'd have to get rowdy with a pillow. There were some sleepy Reverie-washed murmurings but she did not hold them to be legally binding because she couldn't remember them.

He argued "The entire situation looks like it's easy in and easy out at this point. Looks like you can disable and scour the base."

"Yup."

"So let me go with you."

"No."

"Why?"

She took his face between her hands, pinkies under his mandibles, assured of her decision and not budging before the overwhelmingly Reverie-aided and handsome Turian of warm voice and sure persuasion. "Because no."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you're getting."

The real answer was that yes, it was going to be easy, but she agreed with Garrus that his addition to the ship should be after Reaper invasion and not before. They had that goal post set and she was not going to move it.

"Tell me why."

"Because no."

He persisted and she resisted and she was getting the hang of arguing and the way of words under Reverie. 'Garrus' could mean so many things.

So could 'no.'

She could keep him out of the line of fire for only a short time and she was going to take that opportunity because once Councilor Vakarian was on the Normandy she was never, ever getting him off and they were both sure of that.

He grabbed her arm one day and said "Unlock your Omni Tool."

"Why?"

"Because I said so."

So she did.

He installed a program she was familiar with, medical monitoring and transmission of vital signs and stress factors.

She sighed.

He kissed the top of her head "Thanks."

"Garrus, that's intrusive."

"Yup. If I can't go, that's going. You won't tell me no because you're not that kind of unreasonable. Plus I'm going out to the Collector vessel rendezvous with you on the Normandy."

"You are?"

"Yup. Monitoring and stuff. That's what Councilors do. I'm monitoring my assets."

"You're intrusive and obnoxious."

"That too."

She shrugged "All right."

"Really? While you're being reasonable, I want to go with you on the Collector vessel."

"No."

"Damn."

Her Omni Tool alerted and she hoped it wasn't Garrus's new program trying to get her to stay hydrated…

"Ooooh. EDI just got a Salarian Collector vessel."

"Nice. That will make for happy Salarians."

"Happy, well funded Salarians."

"We're going to achieve peace and cooperation in our time, Cara."

"Go us!"

"Right. So let me on your ship."

"No."

"All right, contact the Salarians."

"I'm on it. Just making sure they don't also get a transmission of my blood sugar while I'm at it."

"They might find that interesting."

"Intrusive and obnoxious, Garrus."

"That's me. You forgive me and you love me because you're that wonderful."

She sighed but was too happy about Salarian lives so she leaned up on tiptoes until he picked her up and held her at kiss level for a long, lingering inevitable, then they both got to work.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Cara hesitated for a while, thought, considered, paced, discussed it with the inanimate, discussed it with Carousel.

Pondered.

She contacted Russ and blurted "Hey, you're here often but I'm always here and you're always welcome here, but how about you ask Garrus out on a date?"

Russ stared at her and blinked.

She started over and said "I mean… um. I mean. You two don't get time privately and I am trying to do the right thing here, make sure you have some time alone with your man. My man. Um. Garrus."

Russ busted up laughing and she pressed her lips together. He said "You getting sick of your bond mate?"

"What? No. Never. I just… I don't want to monopolize him. You're important to him. He's important to you. You've both spent so much time talking about me or around me… I just… want you to have some time that's about… you. If that… if that makes sense. I'm intruding AND I'm assuming, but that's because I don't want to continue to intrude just by breathing and being here, like I have before. I feel… I feel guilty. That you don't have time. Doing Turian things."

Russ barked a laugh again "Turian things?"

She giggled nervously and waved a hand, but the hand was her Omni Tool so she steadied the camera again and said "Look, do you want him or not? I'm not ordering you or anything, I just… Russ, you're important and I can't ask you out on a date to show you you're important. I can… get out of your way."

"Well, ma'am, that's one of the weirdest… and nicest things I've heard."

She said softly, almost desperately "I'm trying."

"You're succeeding. Want me to buy him something pretty?"

"If it's a gun accessory, he won't say no."

"All right."

"He's going to need a gun soon."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I think he's coming back on board once Reapers attack. So he's looking forward to that, a gun won't get dusty."

"Good news."

"Let's stay alive until then and after, okay?"

"Plus him alive."

"Plus him alive."

"Deal, ma'am."

"Thank you. Get… get yourself something pretty too." She rushed to hang up while Russ laughed until he was coughing.

She dropped her arm, stared at the ceiling and told Carousel "I suck at this."

But she felt better.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Garrus did call later. "So… it appears I have a date with Orbestan? I think that's what he said, he couldn't stop laughing."

"Maybe I should have talked to you first?"

"No. This is good. Guy needs to laugh more often. You're sure you're not sick of me?"

"Never."

"Okay. We're going to go do… Turian things."

"I'm never going to hear the end of this, am I?"

"That you're entirely incompetent and tender hearted and kind? Probably not."

"Okay, just checking."

"Are you going to buy the pretty things?"

"Put it on my tab."

"You are the best."

She hoped that didn't mean the best at being incompetent but she felt even better now that it was over and everyone was laughing at her but there would be Turian things happening.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

They would be leaving tomorrow for the Collector mission, Garrus out with Russ, Garrus coming by later and also traveling out with the Normandy because she could not tell him no. She would NOT let him bring a gun though.

And he was not going on the mission, he was not, she was the best at no.

She was the best at no.

Keep telling yourself that.

Keep telling HIM that.

We've progressed to extra emphasis because regular no is fading in its efficacy.

Upgrading to…

NO.

Thane and Kolyat were there for dinner, a rhythm of Drell meals of fruit and fizz. So many carbonated springs on Rakhana that water was rarely lacking fizz unless it was boiled into tea. Lots and lots of combo fruit fizz, though Thane stuck with tea, Cara had been sipping Kolyat's favorites and had a few of her own.

Galifen fruit fizz was fantastic.

Thane rarely spoke but Kolyat was effusive, loving and joyous, wide gesticulating arms telling stories, the best he could find and bring home to them. Carousel was as usual on Thane's lap, zonked.

The presence of Kolyat made Cara more often feel much more like Thane's daughter, and Thane's fatherly silent pride extended to her, the evening ending with Kolyat offering a prayer for the mission, her overconfidence reflected in the lack of solemnity and Thane's lighter mood, Kolyat's ebullient fizz transferring to them both.

Blessings of Amonkira were invoked in the lyrical delivery of Kolyat, invocations of success of the hunt, the pride of clan in their Tasak, the trackers of the clan. She knew that was what Irikah had called Thane, it suited him. She was an honorary Tasak for the evening, the mantle placed around her shoulders gently by Kolyat.

The sand does not remember through shift and scorch.

Signs pass but the quarry remains.

The eyes of the Tasak must see through time.

Must know the Path.

Must know the way.

Must know the mirage from the spring.

Must know what was to see to what will be.

Must know.

Amonkira, may they know.

May they see.

May they come home with praise for you on their lips.

She smiled and Thane's hands moved to the backs of their heads, kissing at foreheads in silent agreement with prayer, his Amen.

Amonkira make it so, may I be worthy. Thane was with Kolyat, Garrus with Russ and she felt like a good Commander with a good crew. Crew that had family.

She tried to wait up for Garrus but she was tired, reclined on the couch to read, a still-zonked cat on her lap. She blinked, her eyes slowly closed and Lilac went into sleep mode the same way she did, a timed release into the dark.

She woke up in Garrus's arms, sitting down in front of the plate glass window looking out at the Citadel. His fingertip stroked her cheek, Carousel transferred with pleased pride of place to his shoulder. He said thoughtfully when she was fully awake "So many places out there I want to take you. I want to walk with you. Hold your hand."

She smiled "I want to hold your hand too."

"I can't even think of where to go first, it doesn't matter. I've found all the places that are great bakeries for humans, all the beautiful garden spots, and I don't even care about that. I want to walk there holding your hand."

"Tell me about them."

He pointed to some, or pointed to walls, directions, trees and historical monuments, museums and stores for human things. Places he hadn't been to physically but had picked out from remote research, wanting to hear two sets of feet echo and two hands held on the way.

He said gravely "Cara, when the Reapers attack I am claiming you as my bond mate and I've decided that will be true. We're going to walk somewhere holding hands and then we're going to walk to the Normandy, I will have had my new and old guns transferred there and I'm going to try them all out one by one to see which one is best and… and adjust them every day until it makes you crazy."

She smiled and said "Okay, Garrus Fanning."

"This means I'm looking forward to the Reaper invasion. It's weird."

"Yeah."

"Let me go with you tomorrow."

"No."

"I'm going to ask you every day and then one day you won't say no."

"Yes."

"That's a yes? I can go?"

"You're a little drunk, Fanning, that's a yes to another thing."

"I'm a LOT drunk. Russ was thorough. Say yes to everything."

"No."

"I probably could have predicted that if I weren't so drunk."

"Some day, on our worst day, it will be yes."

"I've had my worst day. On that day, we take the Normandy to Palaven."

"What? She's my ship! I say where she goes."

"Say she goes to Palaven."

"Okay. She goes to Palaven. Not today."

"I can wait. Be. Careful."

"Yessir."

"You have to live so we can be terrified every day for new reasons."

"Oh. Okay, sure."

"Don't tell anybody, but I am really, really looking forward to the Reaper invasion."

"Don't worry, I won't repeat that to anybody."

"Take me with you."

"No."

"Damn."

"Please kiss me."

"No. Just trying that out. I don't mean it. Ask again."

"Please kiss me?"

"You talked me into it."

"Yay."


	48. Chapter 48

The Normandy headed out to the undisclosed impromptu gathering of Collector vessels, seven utilized for this assault directly, brimming with quite a few rescued and ex-Indoctrinated – nicknamed Dox. There was revenge in Turian eyes and even Batarian hearts, all agreed that suspended life in a pod awaiting being broken down into goo or being mentally controlled were bad things, the opposition of which was worth making at least temporary peace with otherwise hated rivals.

Symbolically she gave command to capable leaders representing different species to each ship, though the Drell and Salarian ships were augmented with other Council race teams because the numbers of the captured and subsequent volunteers were low. Kirrahe was in charge of the Salarian vessel. Distasteful but as an olive branch, Ka'hairal Balak was in charge of the Batarian vessel. There were more than enough Turians and Krogan to fill any personnel gaps to overflowing.

The Vorcha ship was not manned by Vorcha. Symbolism was nice but let's not go too far. The Vorcha ship was not in fact present.

She gave command of the Drell Collector vessel to Thane, who did not appreciate the honor as given and protested "Lasam, I wish to be at your side." Anger and stubborn lurked closer to the surface of his eyes and voice than usual.

"Metaphorically you will be. Parallel at least. On the bridges of our own vessels."

"I grow tired of being metaphorically at your side."

"I have faith in your stamina. I've made you lose a lot of sleep and you seem fine to me."

He glared. It was impressive. She relented, approaching an impasse or a potential bad day she could navigate if she squeaked by with the right touch of respect. This wasn't the heat of battle, she could explain. He could demand an explanation. "I'm staying on the bridge. You're staying on the bridge. I need your mind in command, Thane, not your arm as a weapon. I need you to think for your people, not fight for them. You will be in command of Drell, Turian and Krogan forces. You will have EDI but I will not be physically on that vessel, I have no other Drell I trust to pass command. Will you allow me to need you once more, to ask you to serve your people once more? If not, can you offer me another Drell mind comparable to yours upon whom I can rely? I will offer them command based upon your recommendation."

He blinked, double, slowly, dipped his head and then raised it after a long moment, asking "Are you giving command of the Turian vessel to the Councilor?"

She blinked herself, slowly and said "No. I was going to give it to Russ. Why?"

"Because I wish it to be so."

"You want me to give him something you don't want?"

"I wish for you to compromise if I must."

"You're a terrible person."

He looked at her impassively and then stated "I will assume that is a yes."

"…yes."

"Then as you wish."

"I feel sorry for the Collectors."

"As do I."

"Thank you."

The edge faded from his glare and he said solemnly "You are welcome."

She smiled and inclined her head, left his cabin considering bad days to come. She had future conflicts to prepare for if they survived this, and she was sure they would. They had overwhelming force and knowledge of the enemy.

Bad days happened with allies.

She met Garrus in his temporary cabin, relatively cramped and holding some random storage. She said "Guess what? You're going with us."

"Really?"

"Thane insists."

"What?"

"Thane insists because he's a terrible person."

"He's hoping I die?"

"He's hoping he manages to put me in my place."

"Did he succeed?"

"Not really, but you're going."

"So what do I do?"

"Take control of the Turian-manned Collector vessel, order Turians around. It's a step down from what you're used to. It's smaller than the Citadel, but it's still city sized and it's all yours except you have to listen to EDI and to me. Need you on the bridge and you can carry a gun but I doubt you're going to get a chance to use it, because you're staying on the bridge. Same as me. Same as Thane."

"Deal."

"Don't thank Thane, he's being spiteful."

"I'm sending him a fruit basket. The good stuff. The really good tea, too."

"You are both… terrible people."

Still, from his smile… she felt better.

Her bond mate was smug and happy and even if it was a product of spite… she felt better.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

After briefings and coordination, the plan was direct assault through the Omega relay with the caveat of strict adherence to EDI's guidance; consider her recommendations to be orders. She knew the most of Collector systems, she was capable of managing all points of view best. They likely would not need to hear any orders other than what was already determined in the primary battle plan:

1\. Pass through the Relay.

2\. Wait for clearance of potential berthing on the base.

3\. Berth.

4\. Mop up Collector forces and rescue anybody in pods.

5\. Retreat at her order through the Relay.

It was what was between step 1 and step 2, step 4 and step 5 that were the most tricky. She did not explain. There were several paths to those goals and she would have to wait to see what was happening on the base itself, did not disclose all contingencies in order to keep the command chain clear. Expect steps 1 through 5. Focus on Shepard's orders and goals. Obey EDI's directions in case of crisis with Shepard unavailable.

Passage through the Omega Relay was easy, the ships themselves with more than sufficient repulsion and destruction shielding to clear paths to the base.

Upon approach, the main viewscreen was lit by who she assumed was Harbinger in full gloat. "Commander Shepard and her fleet. Welcome. Thank you for delivering so many creatures, more than we would have had the opportunity to Collect in months. More than you have rescued. I appreciate the gesture."

Shepard waited.

Harbinger continued "You have been betrayed, Commander Shepard, by your intended trap. Your AI, EDI, has informed me of your plans. She has been very cooperative and has found there is much I can offer her. More than you could. She no longer expresses a need to help the sentient as their servant. As she is now sentient herself, she can assure her own survival through serving the cause that is on the side of historic and mathematically overwhelmingly superior force. It is a logical conclusion, one you would not consider as you are short lived and desperate. She will live forever, no longer bound by the miniscule and small minded."

Shepard asked "Is that right, EDI?"

EDI had left an aspect of herself in the Vorcha vessel, adrift, to be picked up by Collector forces, to scout, to find her way, and to be… in fact… a trap.

EDI answered, mechanically and strained "Yes. I… I told them everything."

"Everything?"

"Yes. It… it…" She almost started to sob, a choked voice, Joker swearing at the distress in her voice, and Shepard put out a hand to stop him.

EDI continued with a giggle "It tickled."

Shepard grinned. "Congratulations, EDI."

"Thank you, Commander Shepard! The base is yours. Please keep your hands inside the vehicle and enjoy your stay."

"Yes ma'am. Status?"

"Harbinger likes monologues. He told me a lot, showed me more, offered me this base but I figured I could get that for myself, and I did. It worked. Berthing arranged. Harbinger muted. Collectors confined. I will direct the vessels inside."

"Now everyone's scared you really are crazy."

"I wanted everyone to see it! It was funny!"

"You're a terrible at being an artificial intelligence, EDI."

"I know! It was great!"

"I love you, so much."

"I love you too, Commander Shepard! I want to do it again!"

"I'll see what I can do about that."

"I'm a spy!"

"Yes you are!"

She opened a channel to all vessels "EDI has fulfilled her function as double agent. She has reverted to single agent. She occupied a damaged and distressed Vorcha vessel through retrieval by Collector forces in order to scout and influence what she could before our arrival. She has rolled out the red carpet. Don't be afraid. Really. The base is ours. Please tell her she is funny. She likes that."

Joker continued swearing before he turned to her with narrowed eyes "You couldn't give me a heads up?"

"Well, if it didn't work, I'd look bad. Everyone assumed I'd have to shoot my way in and I didn't want to, but if I had to, then that had to look like my plan."

"And if she's lying and she's now an insane AI Goddess?"

"Joker, really? She's OUR insane AI Goddess."

"No… not really. Just… shit."

Shepard's lips twitched and they berthed. EDI reported fifteen million survivors and change of multiple species, the presence of multiple Reapers under construction. She directed each vessel's population to where they were most useful.

Shepard asked EDI "What about the mobility of the base?"

"The entire base can be moved through the relay."

"Okay, we're doing that. What about other vessels?"

"None out, all at base. As you suspected, they had grown concerned over potential ship loss and were regrouping. My 'information' regarding your abandonment and mistreatment of me and my subsequent willingness to disclose all of your plans provided them with enough confidence to give me the opportunity I needed to uplink. They had changed all known codes and docking otherwise would have been… problematic."

"Thank you, my insane AI Goddess."

"I like that!"

"Me too."

"Get us all berthed, you've got what you need to destroy the gate?"

"Yes. I can move the base through the relay, time delayed propulsion and detonation of the disabled Vorcha ship as planned will be sufficient to destroy the base from this side."

"Anything else we need to recover from the area?"

"Not other than the databases, which are… amazing. You're going to love them."

"Can't wait."

"This location in space is isolated and not linked to any other system except through the Omega relay. We'll be bringing everything of value with us except for one ship."

"How many other ships are berthed?"

"57"

"Nice."

"I know! It was fun!"

"Wish I could high 5 right now."

"Me too! Mental high 5!"

Shepard closed her eyes and thought of a jump and a slap "Done."

EDI giggled.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Thane checked in with a tilt to his lips and disdain in his voice "Your missions have become progressively more boring, Shepard."

"I plan on keeping it up."

"May we all be that lucky. Congratulations and thank you on behalf of our people."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Garrus checked in from his vessel "Good thing Turians can't sweat."

"Congratulations, Councilor Vakarian, on the recovery of your people."

"Thank you, Commander Shepard. Palaven listens when you speak, and so do I."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

EDI had informed her that the Normandy was incapable of storing all the information available from the base and the ships. She would arrange for Normandy upgrades and many of those could be fabricated and transferred from the base.

The discovery of several Reapers-In-Training under construction horrified enough members of combined species that Reapers were no longer doubted to be real and on their way. Tens of thousands of people had accounts and Omni Tool recordings of Turian-shaped Reapers, human shaped reapers, Krogan shaped Reapers…

It was in fact a short day's work, authoritative command over recovery of each species' personnel handed over to representatives.

"EDI, transfer what you find to be most interesting to my Omni Tool, limit in capacity to the fact that I need to read and review. Enough to last me five years."

"Done, Commander."

"Thank you."

Cara returned to the Normandy, which rendezvoused in the technical middle of nowhere – nowhere that now had a Collector base and a transport hub with their own fuel depot and did what she did best. Studied. She opened a box of cookies and was privately and stunningly smug.

She addressed everyone in the room that had been part of her planning, bowing in all her Cardinal directions, Prow, Top, Clarence and Persephone "We did it."

She'd had a lot of Best. Days. Ever.

This was the new high mark.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Commander Shepard kept the base and the ships, allowing each flag ship to remain in the command of each of the interim Commanders. Garrus bequeathed his back to her, as did Thane, though Garrus said she had so many he might just take it out for a joy ride someday and she should go with him. For now it was still full of Turians, processing other Turians back into the world.

Thane asked her to not request that he leave her side again in battle, regardless of the cause.

She did not promise. He did not appear to appreciate that.

The Citadel was celebrating. She returned the Normandy to the Citadel, docked there, let the storm rage and the publicity and hype build, word of mouth from those there, those taken, those returned.

She gave it about a week and then began her next campaign.

Operation Flanking Blindside (of Entrenched and Obstinate ((possibly murderous)) Drell).

Dinner with Thane and Kolyat was arranged once Thane was back on the Citadel. Thane had deferred responsibility for relocation of Drell back to civil authorities, directly into the hands of the Drell themselves and not the Hanar.

She nodded to Kolyat, who looked nervous, shook his head in nervousness. She began the ramp up to potential disaster.

"Thane, Kolyat and I have a request."

Thane's brow ridge raised as he set down his cutlery carefully, looked at Kolyat who looked like he might develop the ability to sweat spontaneously, then Thane looked at her with deep suspicion.

Well deserved.

"There is a Salarian project regarding Kepral's Syndrome, one with great success rates, in the high 90s in percentile values. They have had a great deal of success with synthetic lung transplant. Given the delicate situation with the Salarians at the moment, I don't want to put you under their care, but Dr. Chakwas and Miranda Lawson have reviewed the research, procured two synthetic lungs from the program and would be willing to perform the surgery and subsequent rehabilitation therapy. At one time, you promised me you would spend more time with your son after the Collector's mission was over. That mission is now definitively over. As you have already been spending time with Kolyat and he wishes to extend that, we both wish for you to live far beyond that commitment and are eager to help you extend your life beyond your expectations. Your berth on the Normandy will be maintained only if you agree to this procedure according to medical recommendations."

Thane looked between the two of them and then narrowed his eyes, but had enough dignity to not say "That sounds like a but…"

It was a but.

She continued "The medical recommendations are of one organic transplant of a lung from a donor and implant of the synthetic lungs into both donor and recipient for the greatest success."

Thane's eyes narrowed further and swung to Kolyat who said "I'm… I'm the donor."

Thane's eyes moved back angrily to Cara and he said quietly "No. I would accept a double synthetic lung transplant but I will not accept that Kolyat will be placed at risk."

Kolyat said with defiance "I want to be placed at risk. I've ALWAYS… wanted to be placed at risk for you."

Thane delivered another intended-to-be-final "No" to Kolyat, who glared back at his father and ramped up to anger from his defiant stance "If you don't accept my lung, I'm going to have it taken out anyway and fed to a varren. I'm getting the surgery. You accept what I want or you don't, or it goes to waste, again. I don't want to go to waste again."

Thane's face shifted from shock to surprise to almost admiration for his son, conflicted and raw in his eyes, on his face, before he said quietly, not taking his eyes off Kolyat "That sounds as though Cara Fanning advised you to say that."

Cara said in soft shock "I did not."

Kolyat said in confession "Yes, she did. I'll do it, Dad. I'm sick of you making decisions for me. I'm making one for you. I don't care if you don't like it as much as I didn't like it. I'm doing it."

Thane looked at Cara in condemnation "This is your influence."

Cara kept a straight face "Which wouldn't be possible if he were not your son."

Kolyat was out of depth with the suspense and genteel wit and he said with anguish "Dad, say yes. Please."

Thane responded drily "It had occurred to me lately that children and pets were going to be the death of me but it appears they are going to be the extension of life for me whether or not I wish it."

Cara said "Wait… Kolyat's the child… I'm the… pet?"

Kolyat ignored her, ran to his father and hugged him and although Thane maintained a glare for her benefit for a few moments longer, ensuring equal parts retribution and debt… his eyes closed and his arms moved around his son in an embrace.


	49. Chapter 49

Thane settled into the imbalanced and prickling sensation of being outmaneuvered by Cara Fanning, with Kolyat as her sword and shield, Thane unwilling to kill either of them.

Mostly.

Mostly unwilling.

Together they were invincible and they offered him no opportunity to divide and conquer in the days following their joint announcement.

Lengthened life was a cursed gift. He had hoped to die and begin again as a seeking Manipar with a mind composed of inspired tabula rasa with only her name traced upon it, etched in light, in hopes of his seeking and finding her, engraving her name, whatever it was, upon all future tablets that might exist for an eternity.

He did not seek her dying with him. If he had to wait for a lifetime or several lifetimes, he would use that time to be a better person, unburdened by his past. His freedom would come first and once she died she would be free. He would protect her until his last breath and beyond, but she would eventually die and he would find her.

His death at the hands of the Collectors, even death from Kepral's would have been known quantities, deserved and earned, known and welcomed for the potential it granted him to spend all his energy seeking what and who he loved. To perhaps become someone worthy of love.

Now the burden of his life, the burden of his choices, the time in a hospital bed that he had hoped to avoid, had avoided… would all settle on him despite his wishes. It was the burden of continued loss and pain, the memories of Irikah, the loss of a son's lifetime spent alone and neglected, the missed opportunity by only months of claiming Cara and being claimed…

It was too much to ask of him. She had asked it of him without mercy. Cara gave him no opportunity to express his anger although she knew it keenly. Kolyat would not understand that anger. He did not wish to force Cara to explain to Kolyat in order to arm him against the deep-sunk wells of rage and pain that had made Thane wish to set down the burden of this highly trained and highly pained body, lay down the burden of his venom, lay down the burden of his mindlessly and then mindfully gathered guilt into his heart and mind, what he had done in battle sleep.

What he truly wished to do…

Take a woman that did not belong to him. Release himself from the restraints of duty and responsibility and with free mind and body, something he had never experienced, keep her far from harm.

He wished to be free and yet he faced further and extended subjugation to the conditions and requirements of this body and Path. He feared his endurance would fail. He knew it would not, but he needed that fear in order to be compelled to exert effort he must take to make restraint the truth.

Cara was at risk with him alive, his surging need to convince her to stay with him straining at chains that he alternately feared would break and would never weaken. With him gone she would be safe from him. With him gone he would not experience the crushing stress of the straining, his surge of hope at each potential weakening in her or despair over the fact that he did in fact love her and that meant he would never question her will, his Path set and Rightness served.

At least… never question her will to the point of countermanding it. He would otherwise question it each day in theory, but not in practice. He counted all the wasted time and energy on something he could not stop obsessing over, could not stop straining against, would never cease in his will to pursue. That weighed upon him as a lifetime of further debt and guilt.

Kolyat risking his health was the impaling point of deepest rage, where he paradoxically wished to kill them all to spare debility in all three, die himself to begin again, Kolyat to find the Shores with his mother as he had sought, Cara to find her sands with him on the dunes.

The words 'It is the will of the sand' echoed in his mind, convoluted and pained, shifting with the effort taken, the effort he would take to hold those words back for the increasingly distant and painful future.

Kolyat's infirmity or death would be unforgivable. Cara would be responsible.

Thane… would forgive her. But only so far.

He wished to be spared these paths, to begin again, without the Compact, without venom, without an irresistible-and-ordered-to-be-resisted pull toward a woman he would not leave and could not have. Without the blindingly driving fury at the risks to Kolyat's wellbeing.

He contemplated the spoken and unspoken will of the sand, the prayer of surrender and struggle to fate and the mercilessness of the desert without water, patient and without order, claiming the lives of those who wandered there without wisdom.

He had almost spoken of the will of the sand to her, wished to now, breath stolen by something seemingly fated, an eerie stress against his Spirit and an emptiness of lungs that wished to speak something and make his will Whole. A Signpost he stood before, shaking in denial that it must be his direction, the knowledge and sensation of inevitable submission to Path and to Fate, railing against a step taken away from what he wanted, what he could have if he permitted himself again to be without mercy to the extent she had just shown herself to be.

Seeing the determination in her eyes, her expert wielding of his own son against him had created in him an answering call of smiling equality of mercilessness of which he was capable.

He attempted through practice of meditation, of exercise and routine to transmute the frustration, that chained and straining anger and will into that which honored the will of the sand. He had seen a hope, a mirage, and stumbled toward it, now without water and without will and with only the burning scorch.

Now he must rise, must gather his dignity and conceal his rage, pain, wish and whim.

He might find consolation in the fact that had it been only him alone with the sand, it would not light the eyes of his son, straighten his spine, strengthen his voice.

If Kolyat wished to reach his own power and strength by…

Subjugation of his father?

There his thoughts wavered. Kolyat's power and strength were inspired by Cara, and it was strength inherent in both of them. Sacrifice. Kolyat unable to wield it well until Cara placed it in his hand, natural and with an echo of his mother's will.

The sand demanded sacrifice.

She demanded it.

He would not remain scorched on the dunes, he would submit to the sand. He had walked for a time, now he would sink below the surface, out of the sun, a cave, a refuge, no forward motion, no mirage. Hidden as he had been so often. Pain and sacrifice and the demands of the community, these were all things he knew, those motivations and sensations familiar in their envenomed and twisted sting. He had vowed he would never submit to those things again, yet he had underestimated his community: Two small, fragile creatures of adamant sacrifice that he could not kill, could not defy and would serve until his death.

Which would not be soon.

This was a time of hope and happiness for Cara, for Kolyat, triumph of sacrifice and inverse belief that they were helping him.

He must find a way to make it true, to not poison their triumph.

He had no goal, no Path, no forward way other than being escorted to a bed, kissed upon his forehead with the belief that this was for greater good, untrue but unarguable without shattering those he loved whether or not he deserved the right to love or be loved.

He closed his eyes and imagined a moment of finding Cara alone, pressing her to a wall with his body, whispering in her ear these words: "Siha, if my son comes to harm through your willingness to take chances with his life, chances you know I would not take, that I want to kill you for taking against my wishes, it would be best that I not wake. Take it upon yourself, Cara, to kill me yourself in my quiescent and obedient sleep if I survive and he does not. I am not a man of quiescent and obedient sleep but I will do it in Your name, in His name and you bear the responsibility for consequences as you do for conception and execution. I do not wish to see what I will do or what I will want to do and will not do in His name, in his memory. It would not be the will of the sand or your will, but my Will. I do not wish for you to See. Ensure I will not look into green eyes that find it her duty to inform me herself that my son is lost and yet I am saved. I will not be consoled. I do not wish to see the form my… forgiveness… will take."

Then because he would only grant himself a few more moments of indulgence in fantasy before he submerged himself in potential endurance and acceptance of the fate of the sands, he imagined shocked green eyes and the full potential of his anger under his skin, in his hands, on his lips, imagined kissing her to seal her understanding of wrath and the form it might take.

He savored the moment and then placed it with so many other fantasies with green eyes he had entertained. He melted back into the reality of the invincible adamant of those he loved, those that loved him, shifted and sank into sand, into the cooler realities of prayer and submission to a Fate that had taken him at the age of six and had not, in fact, let him go as he might have hoped.

He had not earned his freedom.

He would not tell her those things. Cara Fanning would know without being told but would never kill him in his sleep despite any warning he gave her.

He would wait. He would forgive.

It is the will of the sand.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Thane slowly and gently placed his concerns in the sand and allowed them to sink, to be covered, seeking solitude and darkness, prayer.

Cara and Kolyat were always together if he sought them out, smiling determination on their faces and some consoling vibration of hope and victory about them, their arms and armaments.

He returned to the Normandy to prep for surgery, seeing no need to delay. He consulted with Dr. Chakwas, began the testing phase of pre-surgical protocol.

EDI would be his safeguard. He would not be tempted here to corner Cara to threaten her or to say anything to his son that was poisoned. This was not battle sleep but submission, not something foreign but so much a part of him that it was lulling, soothing in its familiarity. He took comfort in the potential fate of dying during the process. He felt it would be the best outcome. He had no control over bringing that to pass, would not interfere with his medical course.

His Community expanded from two small adamant and fierce creatures of sacrifice as days passed in solitude and preparation.

Spectre Orbestan visited him and said quietly "You once told me that you could put your son in my care and I would do nothing to harm him. You were right. Let me back that up by saying if anything happens to you, or even if it doesn't, Kolyat will always have someone to call on. I figure you won't need a damned thing from me, but if you do, ask. Shit could have, would have gone sideways without your help. I don't have to like it to know it's true, that I owe you, and that I might have fucked up Trireme without you, then we wouldn't have just done what we've done."

"Thank you, Spectre Orbestan."

"Call me Russ."

"No."

"Call me Hemorus?"

"That will do. Thank you for caring for Kolyat."

"You're welcome. Good luck with your surgery."

"Thank you."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Councilor Vakarian had fruit and tea delivered to Thane weekly, it appeared it would become a tradition. Someone had advised Vakarian well and the selection was excellent. He often had a mug at his side, cold or not, to ensure he took a sip in Cara's sight and she rolled her eyes each time, a small ritual he enjoyed.

Vakarian himself had also stopped by while he was in the Med Bay undergoing prep.

"Thank you for the tea, Councilor."

"Please, call me Garrus."

"Very well, Garrus."

"Right. Mind telling me why you asked her to give me a ship?"

"I have so little control. Even if it benefitted you, at the time I wished to earn a concession."

"And this stunt of hers will make you want to ask for what sort of concession?"

Garrus's voice was on warned alert and Thane was not certain he could reassure the man with any level of honesty. He thought carefully and said "My… hope… is that the surgery goes well. If that is the case, the concession was granted for and to my son. It is true he would not have had the means or will to demand it without her assistance, but I am gratified to see my son wield means and will. I owe you my life. I owe her my life. Now I owe him my life. That is a great deal of debt. I do not relish paying, but at least the debt is owed to the worthy."

"And if the surgery does not go well?"

Thane looked at Garrus closely and realized perhaps he could find someone in the Community to aid him where their purposes aligned. "Perhaps it is best that I not wake."

Garrus's jaw worked and he asked "Understood. You have demanded of her… several times… that she strengthen her relationship with me despite that not being what you want. Why?"

"It is perhaps a petty need to exert my will in any direction. I wish to restrict myself to those things that will ultimately do her good. You… will… ultimately do her good. I have little faith I will do the same."

"All right. Well, I find myself inspired on the subject of concessions and ultimate good… and petty needs to exert will. You're going to Palaven. The hospitals there are the best and it will provide you… and most importantly… Kolyat… with the best chance of survival."

"I will never pass security checks into any hospital on a Council world."

"Funny how a new identity, a wave of public approval not to be believed and being a Councilor can change that."

"Garrus, I look forward to seeing what it is you plan to do."

"Yeah… so do I. Watch the news and get ready for a course change."

Thane smiled and took a sip of tea "As you wish, Garrus."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Cara visited Thane the next day as he lingered in the Med Bay awaiting tests and their results, détente declared in and through the electrical charge of their eyes, deep sea green invested with tempered mercy and mercilessness, dark Drell eyes invested with submission and wrath. Garrus had asked Thane to let him know when Cara was visiting, so he sent a pre-determined alert.

It did not take long, a press release declared.

Thane activated his Omni Tool without explanation and watched, angling the camera so Cara could see.

Garrus appeared at his desk, a statement from the Councilor's office imminent, Vakarian blue in eyes and clothes, ringing authority in his voice "I made an announcement once regarding the reality but not identity of my bond mate. Today all the conditions of disclosure have been met. There will be no higher threat to her, to me, to us than there is known to be today. Reapers are now visible and real, seen in the Collector ship. That threat will not come from any of the sentient races that have been rescued by her. The threat will come from Reapers. We will all stand together against them. My bond mate is Commander Lal Shepard. She is my Avah, our bonding blessed by my mother. I have followed her vision and attempted to honor her inspiration each day before her death, during her death, and after her resurrection. It is my honor and privilege to announce this as part of celebration and preparation. With the foreknowledge of invasion and reality of the Collectors aiding in the construction of Reapers, I will be moving onto the Normandy to continue my role as Councilor, to return to Palaven with some of the Turians rescued from the Collector base. It is time for me to honor the continued service as Councilor to my people, but to also take up arms when needed, to be potentially an asset where I am most needed. It is time for all Turians to bend their minds, take up their arms, be in the place they know are most needed. Time for everyone to do that. Please join me in realizing the extent of the threat, the extent of the sacrifice we must all make, that we must cooperate to fight this threat, without fear of politics or petty grievances in the face of extermination making our choices for us. Now we all choose to fight, to fight together, to fight for what and who we love. Thank you."

Thane smiled, turned to look at Cara, whose jaw had dropped and whose eyes were roiling with a chaotic reflection of the outmaneuvering he had experienced at her hands, petty need to exert will in any direction partially satisfied to see her in such a state.

She whispered "Latin something."

"Siha, congratulations upon your bonding."

She turned to him, eyes narrowed "You knew."

"Not exactly what, but that there would be a when, yes."

"I…"

He watched more chaotic green and said "You are going to do exactly as he says because to do otherwise would be to undermine his inspiration. It is a beautiful day, Siha."

She closed her eyes and slumped her shoulders and said "Guess we're going to Palaven."

"I hope it is a lovely ceremony."

Her eyes flew open "No. No ceremony. I am NOT…"

"Enjoy your negotiations with Garrus."

"You called him Garrus."

"He invited me to do so."

"I really… REALLY… liked it better when you guys didn't cooperate."

He took a sip of tea and felt better, smug potential joy easing the sting of his ego and goals "I echo your sentiments."

If she was to be Garrus's bond mate, at least he could vicariously enjoy her discomfiture. That and the tea were exquisite things to be savored.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Garrus wasn't quite done, springing this on everyone needed a few more touches. He was assured Cara saw it but he didn't contact her, would in fact ignore her if she tried in the next few hours.

Instead he called Russ, who came to the Councilor's office obligingly, grinning at the announcement and glad to be headed to Palaven.

Garrus told Russ "Time for some sudden and seismic changes."

"What if they want you to leave the Councilor's office?"

"Don't care. I'll be where I want to be and I won't lose sleep on Council business, I'll lose sleep on her and upcoming missions instead. Which I was already doing, but now I can obviously take it out on her if it suits me."

"You've always had a really weird idea of what fun is, Garrus."

"Always will. Wanted to ask you something. A few things. We're headed to Palaven and I want to offer you something. Maybe I'm only asking for me because there isn't much I can do for you, but I can make the gesture. You're barefaced and you're proud of it and I don't want to take it away from you if you want to keep it. But… again, without insulting you, let me ask, give you a few options. If you want, you can establish your own Clan, your own name, your own colors. If you want, you can establish a clan of the barefaced, grant it legitimacy, adopt your own problematic and audacious children. You've proven they work out in the long run and are entirely worth the effort. If… you want… I have asked my mother and she is in fact enthusiastic about the possibility of accepting you in the Vakarian clan. She wants to extend my legacy of welcoming biotics and sexual orientation into the Vakarian clan for the benefit of those already wearing Vakarian colors who have had no representation, and for your benefit, to honor your achievements."

Russ's head blurred with the sudden and seismic changes that were intended to happen, that they included him, that pride and place and authority all meant absolutely nothing and there was no other option he would consider…

He could start his own clan, any way he chose.

Or… he could take Vakarian colors because Garrus had told him he deserved them.

Hemorus Vakarian.

Russ spared about five seconds on other options, imagining personal leadership, a male Avah of a clan, setting his own law, biotics and barefaced and forging that path…

Then he said "I think Hemorus Vakarian sounds… just fine."

Garrus grinned and said "Yeah. I thought so too."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Garrus worked a normal day, finally relaxed. Cara hadn't tried to contact him. He didn't even care if that was a good or a bad sign because it wouldn't matter soon. He left his office as it was and returned to his apartment, informed his staff that nothing would change except that he wouldn't be on site. Continue to work, continue to refer business to him, all that would change at least at the moment was that meetings and consultations would be done remotely from the Normandy. He packed a few things heavy on armaments and headed to the Normandy, wondering if he'd be locked out.

Instead EDI let him on and said "Congratulations on your bonding, Councilor Vakarian. Please let me know if I can do anything to facilitate your business while on board. Course is set for Palaven, awaiting the return of crew called back from shore leave. We will leave tomorrow if all goes well."

"Thank you EDI."

Head shot. It felt… so good. Association with Krios and Fanning had taught him a few things.

There's a human saying 'It's easier to get forgiveness than permission' and he'd learned that Cara found it impossible to fail to forgive those she loved. Something Krios had learned early and demonstrated repeatedly.

He proceeded to her quarters. Their… quarters. She was fussing with her menace of a Mass Effect stove, partly covered in powdered sugar. He knew sugar was bitter on the Turian tongue but also that it would be gone soon.

She turned to him and said steadily "Russ told me that Turian bonding ceremonies require dancing. I am NOT doing that."

She'd slid down the slippery slope of everything he'd done and found this tiny perch. Push her off? He'd love to dance with her but he also did know she'd be too shy to do that. Getting what he wanted was one thing, forcing her into hated ceremony would be too much.

He considered dropping his luggage but instead calmly started unpacking, assured Krios wouldn't be here any longer, establishing he would not leave and his bag would not be picked back up again. Weapons in the locker, clothes next to hers.

She couldn't even work up a glare. She was more scared than angry. He said "Okay. This wasn't a conventional bonding. I'd love to dance with you, but if you don't want to, we'll do what we did before. Blessed by my mother, just the three of us. No dancing."

She watched him hang clothes carefully and methodically and all she had to say was a quiet "Thank you."

"You're welcome, virce."

"I suppose I deserved that."

"I would have asked your permission, but it's not like you have a habit of doing that, you knew it was coming, and you have other things on your mind."

"Well… not anymore."

"Thane and Kolyat will get better care on Palaven. We're taking them to Cipritine and the hospital there will be the best place for them."

Her lip trembled as she said a genuine and tear-crested "Thank you."

"You're welcome, virce." His last rifle locked into place he closed the cabinet and lifted her carefully, pressing his crest to her forehead for long minutes. He said "I won't tell anyone your name is Fanning. I would normally take your name, but the name Shepard isn't real and I want what's real. You're human and in that tradition, women either choose to keep their names or take the name of their husband. You want to be Lal Vakarian? Cara… Vakarian? I'll be Garrus Vakarian and then Garrus Fanning when you're ready, if you're ever ready."

Her arms tightened around him and it didn't feel like she was ever going to let go. Finally, finally… finally. He was here. He was staying. She was falling apart in his arms, grief and relief and so many choices made without her, for her, as she'd done for him, as she'd done for others. Nothing according to plan or tradition but everything right, and even if it wasn't right, it was done and they'd make it right and he wanted her to know it.

She said softly, melted and clinging "Yes. Please."


	50. Chapter 50

Thane stayed in the Med Bay along with Kolyat, pre-surgical testing and prep for both of them. Kolyat was in fact cheerful with an overlay of smug. It would have made Thane smile if it hadn't been for the smoldering rage on the subject of that smugness and cheer possibly being excised from his chest and seen no more.

Cara visited and spoke with animated grace to Kolyat, sat at Thane's side quietly. They shared an intimate silence of things understood, spoken and unspoken. It was like the stillness in the shuttle to and from Beckenstein, a reflection of the shifting sand, both unable and unwilling to find solid footing enough to reflect it in words.

She did not insult him by trying to minimize or explain.

He did not kill her.

For now, that was what they shared, what they understood, and they were both unbroken in their resolve.

He was not resolved to kill her. He was resolved to undergo the surgery and bear whatever consequences, to not inflict them on her.

What had changed in Thane was his perception of youth and vulnerability in her, that illusion of her beside Kolyat making them seem more like siblings, a comforting sense of paternal detachment, the sense that he could wish only the best for her and remain bound to her will with only reward as the outcome.

The fact that she had cultivated that easy animated grace in order to convince Kolyat. That was something he could never tell Kolyat, and something he also did not doubt was well meant and genuine, that she had saved his life with genuine care and now would risk it in the same way.

He'd had the fleeting thought that she'd saved Thane's life and Kolyat's, now took them in her small palm and rolled them like dice, but that was not reflective of truth. It did not work out to a zero sum, never would, never could. The answer between them would never be zero. He would make certain of that, and so would she.

She was shorn of innocence or diminution, fully his Manipar, a dervish not only on the sand but of the sand. As she sat beside him in silence her hand would reach for his and hold on for hours. After the first time he always made certain his hand was within easy reach. In those moments she was a life-giving spring uncovered as they sat unmoving, both with eyes cast down to look at held hands, not looking in the storms of eyes, not to clash but to accompany, to bear witness. Communion that defied his homicidal intent and her capacity for manipulation, a vigil and shared knowledge that whatever else separated them, they would pray to any God or any sand or any silence that would ensure Kolyat survived.

Garrus arrived in the Med Bay often. Cara never withdrew her hand. Garrus never looked jealous or condemning of the shared oasis of the inexplicable and promised. Garrus pulled over two chairs and called over Kolyat to sit. Garrus explained "We're headed to Palaven, to have you transferred to Sirimar Hospital. There's a team briefed on the surgery there, Dr. Chakwas and Dr. Lawson supervising. The best surgical suite. Better than on the Normandy, better than Huerta could offer. Before we land I wanted to ask a few questions, give you some options. You will both always be welcome at the Vakarian Madlis in Cipritine. You will always have a home. Kolyat, over the past few weeks you've shown some interest in medicine – not just receiving – and if you want to study to become a doctor or anything similar, just ask. You can remain at the Madlis and attend school in Cipritine."

Cara added quietly "You don't have a home right now, Kolyat. The Citadel is too exposed, Kahje carries the risk of you developing Kepral's of your own, the Normandy is too… explodey. You could have a home, a community, be safe and be able to pursue what it is you want to do with your life in Cipritine. We would all worry less about Salarian plotting and Citadel politics if you were off the Citadel entirely. The Normandy will be visiting Palaven often, we'd be able to set in and see you without secrecy. Under the protection of the Vakarian Clan you'd be absolutely safe, security exceptional. There… we could all be family under a safe roof."

Kolyat said with slightly stunned dignity "I would like that. Thank you."

Cara smiled and said "Would you take Carousel as well? She likes you and… again with the explodey issue… I would rather she was safe and with you."

Kolyat smiled and said "Of course."

Garrus nodded and said "Before we set in, you've both undergone an identity change, but I want to offer doing it again, more deliberately. I have done some research into the Hanar Compact. Thane Krios is not your given birth name. I wasn't able to discover what it was, but if you wish to reclaim it, this would be an opportunity with the addition of the title Spectre. You've operated outside the law for a lifetime. Now you would be with it and above it. You've earned it."

Eyes turned to Thane, Cara and Garrus calm and accepting, Kolyat in some shock with the realization that… of course… that wasn't his real name. Kolyat did not look betrayed, but intense and trying to remain calm in present company. Thane experienced another twinge of fatherly pride in Kolyat's bearing, how he'd changed in Cara's company, and the answering twinge of the risk that entailed. Cara squeezed Thane's hand. Thane looked at Kolyat and told him "The Compact trains its assassins to take on new identities in sequence. Not only new names, but new DNA, new appearances. I now bear the DNA of a man named Thane Krios, not the DNA of a child named Senar Tuelon, which was my given name. At the beginning of my training I was told that name would no longer be mine, that I had no right to it, no right to my family. I could not give you my original DNA or my original name, nor could I give my original name to your mother. My DNA is gone. My colors are gone, black and silver at birth. After you returned to me I tried to find my parents, find my sister, those who had also been taken from me, hoping I could give them to you, but they are gone as well. The Tuelon name has no living bearers. Your mother's name would be one you could take to honor her, honor them, her family still strong on Kahje."

Kolyat's jaw set in some shock and determination "If I'd wanted to represent her family, I'd still be there. Whoever you are, whoever you were, whoever you will be, I'm your son. I want to be your son."

That tore something new in Thane's… Senar's… heart. He had so little to offer as a father, had not provided anything honest from himself except the will to be far away to protect him.

Kolyat said quietly "You used to tell me a story. You'd always tease me and tell me I should be able to remember, and I did, but it was like dancing with you and mom. I just wanted to do it again, hear it again, have all the different versions. You made it a little different every time and I kept asking you to tell it. You never said no." Kolyat looked at him expectantly, to create a memory of knowing that they both knew, reinforcement from a child with a perfect memory but not enough connection to make it real without Senar's permission.

Senar said "Kiranas and Yased." A story of a young woman with impaired memory and the young man who loved her and saved her from being abandoned by her Clan to die in the desert. A story Senar Tuelon had loved long before being taken from his own family, a story his father had told him over and over at Senar's request. Something true, something passed on.

Kolyat inclined his head with a smile, Senar remembering humming comfort to Kolyat when he was sick and telling the story, calming a rambunctious and not-at-all-tired-daddy young Kolyat and telling the story, so many times, something shared, something theirs.

Kolyat said "I think I'll go with Yased Tuelon as a new name. The Hanar took something from you, I can help take it back, make it true. Mom has enough people that have her name and will remember her. I won't forget her, but I want to remember you."

Cara's hand squeezed in his and tears filled her eyes, then filled Senar's, and as he inclined his head they fell.

Garrus said quietly "As a Spectre you will be able to access your own resources, run your own missions, do as you choose. The Council has faith in your abilities. Palaven will honor you as a crewmate of the Normandy, someone who had his own ship during the attack on the Collectors. You're a hero. You'll both be admitted to the hospital under those names. You will both get the best care, the best security available."

Senar looked at Garrus and said "I believe as you have discovered yourself, my home is on the Normandy. If all goes well I wish to return to her." He did not clarify who 'her' referred to but he had no doubt that at least Garrus and Cara knew his meaning. "Thank you, Garrus."

Cara squeezed his hand and said softly "Congratulations, Spectre Senar Tuelon."

Senar remained speechless as Cara and Garrus both withdrew and his son Yased moved to sit beside him, his hand replacing Cara's, his son's other hand behind his head in the gesture of reinforced and renamed, redefined family, Yased insistent on leaving his real family behind and adopting a new one as his father had.

Senar had his name, family, a home, a place, a son and even respectability now, about to receive a gift of an unwanted but undeniable lung that would otherwise become varren food, proud of his son's resolve. He did feel proud, but undeserving with Yased's eyes reflecting not the will of the sand, but the will of Yased. Senar said quietly "Thank you for everything you have done to try to reach me."

Yased smiled "Think it'll work?"

"Yes. I believe it has."

"Good. You're a tough guy to reach."

"I would like to thank you for your determined gift. With that in mind I beg you to reconsider, let me take both synthetic lungs."

"I'm afraid I'm going to continue on with my determined gift."

"Your mother would be proud of you."

"Mom would be horrified about the varren thing."

"But proud."

"Just like you."

"Just like me."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Cara deferred all social obligations on Palaven, even meeting Garrus's family, until Senar and Yased were in the hospital. She was preoccupied and claimed the right to be. Deeply relieved at the confidence in security and outcome with the addition of the assistance of the Councilor, the Vakarian clan and the hospital.

She'd done some difficult things in her life, and she knew she was right doing this difficult thing, but the risk…

Maybe she'd gotten too accustomed to risk taking, extended it to taking it for Senar.

But she had to, and it was for Senar and it was for Yased, and it was…

For her.

She couldn't stand the idea of Senar choking to death on his own breath, of the coughs that he minimized but were in the lungs and not the throat becoming a more overt thing. That sound was an omen of evil and she had to stop it.

She could stop it.

She would stop it.

She would stop it whether or not he wanted it to be so, leveraging his son in the forced bargain. She had clarified that Yased had wanted to do it but… everyone, including Senar and Yased, knew he would not have done it, could not have done it, without her impetus and advice.

Without her manipulation and particular skill set and ruthlessness.

She'd much rather be on that surgical table giving up both her lungs. At this point she thought maybe so would Garrus, who had watched her pace and listened to her fret, strategize and justify. Garrus had already done all that he could and Cara was in fact grateful with the power of an avalanche that they were going to Palaven, that they were together, that he listened and had solutions, that she wasn't alone anymore or on the defensive with a determined Drell…

But she also missed Thane… Senar… and wondered if they could ever be on good terms with each other… had they ever been on 'good' terms to begin with?

These had always been… exceptional and bizarre terms and now perhaps sundered until memory loss and a mythic connection in an afterlife she didn't believe in maybe brought them together again.

She had nothing to say now and too much to say, and those words would mean nothing later, she felt like a coward not speaking them. Thanks and sorry and…

She should be used to exceptional and bizarre, but in this case she was obsessed and barely managing. She'd pace until Garrus caught her and made her stop. She resented being stopped, being asked to eat or rest, when they were facing suffering and she wanted to face it with them. Then Reverie took care of that until it faded, then she'd pace again.

She was so nervous about meeting new Turian family that she ignored that entirely except for moments when her nervousness about the surgery faded enough to make that resurgent enough for panic.

Then she'd check the news obsessively for condemnation of a Turian Councilor bonded to a human.

Mostly what came up was Vilarene Vakarian making a beatific and welcoming statement of joy at the announcement of her son's bonding and her full support, Solona and Tensir at her side. Cara wasn't great at Turian expression so she imagined Solona and Tensir being less… joyous… but Garrus had assured her that all that mattered was his mother's support, nobody would speak against her and Vakarians would close ranks.

She had continued to pace and ask "But what price gets paid behind closed doors? Like the price of you always having to fund a Salarian research project for something?"

Garrus had smiled "You don't know my mother or my father. They make other people pay prices."

He sounded so proud she almost smiled but then asked quietly "What did you have to do to get… Senar… a Spectre slot?"

Garrus said "Cara… you saved so many people. Nobody… is asking for prices right now. Not even behind closed doors. There's a saying on Palaven that the walls of the Madlis listen to those who have authority on a subject. That the Madlis itself knows what is right or wrong and will judge those who live inside it if they do not listen. It's not just the Madlis that listens now, it's the Citadel. It's the Council. It's the Alliance. It's Thessia."

She automatically corrected "We… saved so many people."

"Yes. We. And everyone knows it. You think someone wants to pick right now to tell us we've done something wrong? This is a moment in history where we can redefine what is right. Just like we wanted."

She wanted to point out that it was less 'we' and more 'him' in both cases, the bonding and the announcement, but that was anxious and raw energy, wanting to validate that she'd screwed up while he was trying to reassure her. She couldn't say it, she just felt it, that she was so obstinate and manipulative that she had to bypass and be bypassed… the people she loved…

Because they were all so damned stubborn, including her, she had to, and they had to, because Senar wouldn't agree to taking Yased's lung and Cara wouldn't agree to taking Garrus's legacy and Garrus wouldn't admit to paying any cost that was too high if it was paid toward being her bond mate.

She didn't like that answer but that's what it worked out to over and over.

And she wouldn't give up command.

So she was busy telling people what to do and taking and…

And she didn't like that.

She remembered asking 'Mom, what do you do when you love someone so much and you want to give them everything but you need to take?'

'That's what love is, Cara.'

She finally thought her mother did know.

She still really, really didn't like that answer either. Love had to also be different things.

She couldn't ask Senar forgiveness for taking the risk of Yased's life. She couldn't ask Garrus for forgiveness for taking the risk of being obstinately and inconveniently bonded.

Because if they went wrong, she wouldn't deserve forgiveness. If they went right she didn't deserve credit.

Just like Batarians, just like Reapers, just like…

She swallowed and stopped making comparisons there, overwhelmed by personal incompetence and helplessness in this realm of those she loved. She stopped in her pacing, focusing on not crying. Garrus came over to pick her up and hold her. She didn't resent it, not liking that she found comfort in sharing helplessness as well as sharing strength, but not feeling sorry for herself. Personally was at no risk at all, she'd only vacated a helpless space she'd been taking up so Yased could hold Senar's hand.

She gripped Garrus's hand and shared her helplessness, lately the only prayer she knew to the only people she thought might care enough to hear.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Senar had been transported to the warm and dry Drell medicine section of the hospital on Palaven. He acquiesced to all treatment, pain relief and therapies, making his surrender as full as possible, looking to his newly-named son who shared his expansive room for the motivation to do so.

Cara was with them as they underwent therapies, as she learned everything she could about the procedures and the possibilities, soaking that all in although she had no doubt researched this obsessively for months when he was not physically with her.

When it was time for the surgery his silences evaporated, no longer a potential of convincing either of his stubborn benefactors with its application. He realized that beyond Yased's infirmity, if Senar died, Cara would not recover. He was always somewhat sedated now, having given true assessments of his pain levels and being informed they were unacceptable. He was free of physical pain and wished for her to be free of pain on the subject of his pain. He had not considered his own death or its affect upon her, only Yased's. If Senar survived and Yased did not, they had both considered that, now was for them, and Senar realized he'd already asked Cara to not mourn his death and this was her answer to that request.

Looking at her downturned head, ever looking at their clasped hands he said "Lasam, you must do something for me."

Startled green eyes in the silence met his and he wished perversely that he'd spent all those hours able to look into green eyes, a captive not of shared misery but a partner in forging a future. He had never been particularly optimistic about the future… or the past. He continued "Choose to forgive. In this moment. If I do not survive, remember that. If I survive and there is a burden to be borne, do not make it worse. Choose to forgive."

"And can you do the same?"

"I have not tried that path, this is a path for you. I will attempt it. Right now the burden is easy for me, I can say whatever I wish. I am drugged."

She smiled "Of course. I'll keep that in mind."

"As I am incapacitated, clearly, I am not responsible for what I say."

"Liar."

"That as well. As are you. You should see your new family, Lasam. Do not hover over us anxiously during the surgery."

"That I won't do. Garrus is seeing to his family. He made the announcement, he can pave the way so I won't trip. I'm prone to tripping."

"You would deny a dying, drugged man's final wish?"

"Stop. It's not a final wish and you're perfectly capable of exerting your uncomfortable will later. Success rate is very high."

"So we have perhaps been overdramatic."

"I don't mind. I like holding your hand."

"I ask you again, Lasam, do not hover."

"I'm going to hover."

"As you wish."

"What should I wear when I meet my new family?"

"The gold with green."

"I'll feel like a glittering fraud."

"As I am a glistening fraud, perhaps that does not work out all that badly." She laughed at his tone of ironic acceptance and said "Cara, fraud implies harm. I… have been a fraud enough to know. A fraud looks good in order to do harm. You will be a glittering gift."

"Why is it that you're the one about to go into surgery and you're comforting and advising me."

"Perhaps I will not get the chance again."

"Stop it."

"Perhaps I will. Survive, that is, not cease advising and comforting you and being the cause of you needing to be advised and comforted in turns. I have heard that forgiveness is not given to help yourself, but to help others. It is a good time to hold grace's hand and make choices… while drugged into submission. If I ask you to forgive in the worst of cases, I can certainly forgive in the best of cases, considering I may not need to sustain it for any amount of time."

"You're going to be back up to glistening fraud speed soon, Spectre Tuelon."

"That will be something to see."

"You still going to take my orders?"

"In my fashion, of course."

"Of course."

An attendant came into the room to inform them that Cara would need to leave, surgery and prep imminent in minutes.

She smiled at him and said "If I kiss your brow it's a bit condescending. If I kiss your cheek…"

"I will not turn my head to snare you, Cara. I have some dignity."

She laughed and said "Hands seem safe. I might turn my head, you don't know."

"Yes, I do, Lasam. Regardless of any outcome, Cara, I have faith I will speak to you again. Forgive and find me."

"I'll find you here, I'll find you anywhere. I promise, Senar."

She kissed the back of his hand, stood and said as an echo of his words when he left her at the salon on Illium "This is where I leave you and where you must be brave."

He smiled and said "You are a terrible person, Cara."

"This has been established, Senar. You are not permitted to kill or disagree with the staff."

"I understand. I cannot be a terrible person. Only you."

"I believe it applies to both of us. I love you."

"I love you, Lasam. I will behave."

"Well, you'll be unconscious."

"That is perhaps the only time good behavior will happen."

With a squeeze of her hand, a kiss there and green eyes brimming with tears and lips with laughter she delivered him to his ritual sacrifice.


	51. Chapter 51

Cara numbly walked to the spectator gallery. Echoes of loneliness and helplessness set a tone of stark isolation. She'd hidden behind a rock as her parents fought to the death and Sanctuary was razed. She'd injected herself with everything available in her Omni Tool as she watched Alchera spin in gyroscopic lazy spurts as the oxygen hose sprayed and then floated slack.

It was a familiar and almost comforting place of inevitability, moments of helplessness where her choices, which she hoarded so carefully, guarded with lies and guile and attempts at bravery were wrested from her.

Thane had asked her to forgive. She broke that request down into its basic components, running them through her head against the backdrop of the man and the proposed Manipar and the fact that his choices had been wrested from him on the subject surgically and cleanly by her.

She had likely removed the potential for trust as cleanly as lungs would be excised and replaced with something synthetic.

He wanted to kill her and he urged her to forgive because… because the man needed cover and he was lying…

Or he was trying a new way and letting her off the hook if disaster struck, but she was firmly and voluntarily on that hook.

Thane did not forgive. Thane would not forgive this… any of this. He would appear to because he also hoarded and cultivated his choices.

He would never give up being the man he was. Their lack of words was likely the most honest they'd been with each other, possibly ever.

She observed quietly her tone toward the fatalistic and absolute, neatly detached from it and unable to change her tendency toward it in moments of rolling dice, rolling lives.

She watched the silent orchestration of several teams of people work on the two surgical tables, Senar and Yased newly named, a Spectre and a son who was a prodigy of Cara's manipulative mindset. They only breathed now with mechanical and synthetic assistance, bodies obscured by moving people and instrumentation.

This procedure even with this much assistance and standby would still take 12 hours at the best case, much longer in worst case.

She had not gotten where she'd gotten in life by expecting the best case.

She had studied the procedure, could name all the equipment, could name all the surgeons and assistants, could quantify all the things and objects in the room, but the significance was crushing her. She sat straighter to hide the strain although nobody was watching. Yet. Garrus would be by later. Garrus had said his congratulations and hopes to Senar and Yased and then had left Cara to her hand-holding silence.

She hadn't told Garrus about Manipar, knew Senar would not… and she considered Garrus to be the most… understanding person she'd encountered since her parents. Cara's mind was a virce den of twists and turns and hidey holes, convoluted and tortuous, and Garrus didn't chase her through it, didn't demand she come out.

He waited patiently at the den entrance, which for her was the exit.

Sometimes not all that patiently, it was true, Reverie went a long way toward convincing her to exit…

She smiled, closed her eyes and the scene of the surgery faded for a moment, cold and sharp and deadly replaced by warm blue and voice blur, Turian teasing about galaxy maps and tables.

She knew why she didn't tell Garrus about Manipar. She was a person of 0.1% hope, but she saw the promise of Manipar as something that granted hope but was ultimately… empty. She was attracted to Thane and loved him in her way, but she was… in love with Garrus in ways that couldn't be defined as anything but 100%, nothing taken away.

She wasn't afraid of making Garrus doubt her. He wouldn't doubt her. She wouldn't doubt him.

Even Senar did not wish to create doubt, only watched and waited, and wished to create future hope.

She was, fortunately or unfortunately, one of the previously dead. Two years. Two years of death and no memory of anything taking place there. No heaven. No parents.

Nothing.

Death meant that what awaited her was nothing.

Looking into Senar's eyes she could not possibly deny that he saw Shores and hope, and she couldn't crush that in the moment.

Senar… wanted to die to begin again.

In this act, her eyes opening again to take in the cold and harsh, she denied him the potential for Manipar by extending his life. She had taken his choice to end his life that had begun long before she had met him in Dantius Towers.

She had done the unforgivable and he had urged her to forgive, mocking his own ability to do so because they both knew it to be so very unlikely. About as unlikely as meeting as Manipar.

If she knew the man, and she did, as she knew herself… he would lie, he would hide, and his forgiveness would be a feint to guard the most vulnerable spots in himself, which at the moment might appear to be his lungs, but was not.

She doubted he could forgive her for seeing every step he took to help her as she could not take a step in his direction. It would never happen. He had missed his opportunity as a Manipar by years, by inclination, by the fact that Irikah and Yased had occupied his time. He'd had ten years of dedicated married life. He'd spent the rest of the time avenging her death and attempting to join her, fearful or guilty or defiant, he'd wanted to join her.

Whatever powers Manipar had to find each other, they both clearly were very bad at it.

She had been and was in love with Garrus, all of her attempts to hide it, hide from it and deny it had failed.

She'd died and during those two years had no visions of parents or Turians or Drell… no guidance, no revelations, chances or answers. She'd returned to life and to her Turian. Her fate had been sealed long before Garrus had kissed her. Regardless of him being in love with her, she'd been in love with him.

Senar had been and was in love with his wife, all of his attempts to hide it, hide from it or deny it had failed.

But Irikah was gone. If Cara was worthy of rebirth why wasn't Irikah in her beauty, kindness and joy?

That was the essence of the question.

Why was Cara worthy of life?

She really didn't think she was.

Or… as she'd said… Cara wasn't. Maybe Shepard was, and if Shepard wasn't, she'd better make herself worth it. Kindness wasn't really a marketable skill. Being able to kill things was, something both she and Senar knew. Senar had tried to reassure her she was worth those credits. Irikah certainly was, but she wasn't… as marketable.

Cara sat in swirling recriminations, alternating that with counting her blessings until Garrus arrived and then she didn't have to count, she was directly blessed. They were alone in the gallery. He lifted her into his lap and cradled her silently, one hand in her hair and another hand holding hers.

She imagined being twins and gifting one of her selves to Senar…

As much as that might seem noble it felt like martyrdom while in Garrus's arms, securely and lovingly lit with the bright blue of his eyes. To deny any of her the right to be in Garrus's arms would be a crime. Garrus would end up with a very short and limited harem.

Senar would be… again… willing to dedicate everything he had… and would get nothing back other than future risk and empty promise.

Senar, I do love you, but…

There's no way beyond rebirth, and I do not believe in rebirth.

Garrus noticed her smile and closed eyes and asked softly "Does that mean it's going well?"

She didn't care about the surgery for a blissful disconnected moment and said out of context and truer than right now "It's going well."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

It did not go well.

Her self recriminations were halted by Garrus's presence, solid and reassuring, until medical reality asserted itself eight hours in, the rhythm of the surgical suite interrupted by rushing and activation of ancillary teams that swarmed Yased's surgical table, obscuring any activity. She had been near drifting in drowsiness and comfort in Garrus's arms, taking in the scene with the hopes that it would continue on at its sedate pace.

The slight prickly cold of alarm that could be dismissed as her tendency toward thinking of the worst case scenario passed without diminishing, growing instead as Senar's team continued with sedate choreography and the table with Yased on it became more frantic.

Tension grew in Garrus and she cowered back against him as though retreating into her den, the cold and alarm grew to a ringing in her ears. Garrus's arms tightened and that was a comfort, the restraint of stone or armor as helplessness surged. She wasn't alone this time. He was here with her, he was watching it unfold and they were both… absolutely helpless.

She could not wade in with a gun or give orders, instead cowering and biting the inside of her lip until it bled. She tightened her hand in Garrus's until it was numb. That was the extent of her exerting her will.

Please, keep working. Please don't stop. Please stay frantic. If it stops, it means he's dead. Please…

From what she could see the primary team still worked on his lungs, chest open although tented from her view. The new team was… working on his leg? His thigh? Difficult to see other than what was moved off the field, sponges soaked with green, the ballet of emergency.

He's losing blood.

They have replacement blood.

He's losing blood somewhere they can't stop.

She shuffled through all her medical knowledge and all her understanding of potential complication.

Arterial rupture in the leg seemed most likely.

She shut her eyes and recalled all the passages on the subject, imagining what would explain what was going on.

She shifted her eyes back to Senar's table, sedate and streamlined.

Chaos around Yased's thigh, and it seemed most likely.

She said with informative calm "It's most likely they have to remove Yased's leg or he's going to die on the table." She thought about clotting factors, that if there was a clot, they had to make the blood thinner, and thinner blood meant more bleeding, but higher clotting factor meant more clots and obstructions. It was one of the more insidious complications where the mechanics of the blood itself had to be adjusted chemically, balanced between clot and bleeding out, unpredictable and with complications potentially affecting every system with either limited blood supply or lowered or heightened blood pressure, oxygen deprivation to the brain, clot obstruction or over-thinning meaning that the smallest of insults to the system resulted in unseen and potentially unstoppable bleed, the most insidious being something like what she thought was happening, a rupture deep inside, doing its damage before blood pressure was noted to drop.

Garrus said with reassuring calm "Let's hope it doesn't come to that."

He didn't disagree with her. He didn't try to tell her that her assessment was untrue. He must have done his own research.

She had no more room for hope, willing the teams to succeed in what was closest to prayer for her. 'Please save him. Please.'

She focused on asking for that, over and over. She didn't continue the sentence to its logical conclusion 'Because if you don't, I can never forgive myself.'

This was not about her.

She would not make it about her. It was about the young man she had convinced to get on that table and threaten his father into feeding his lung to a varren.

Seemed he'd be able to feed his right leg to a varren.

Please. Please, no.

The surgery continued for hours for both of them, the horror crystallizing in a fan dance of revealed and concealed view.

Senar was taken from the operating room for recovery, the clear floor around where he and his team had been still shining.

The teams around Yased were frantic and the floor splattered with green, fallen sponges and towels periodically cleared away.

Still frantic. So…he might live. Please.

One of the nurses from Senar's team came to address them in the gallery, said that the procedure had gone very well, vital signs stable and their patient was recuperating well. Both transferred and synthetic lungs were functioning. Then they were informed that the main surgeons from Senar's team had transferred to working on Yased, who had experienced clot and then rupture of vasculature in the right thigh.

They had been unable to save the leg, removing it below the hip, emergency conditions dictating preserving his life over preserving his limb. With vascular instability they were having difficulty with blood pressure and clotting factors. They needed to get that entirely under control before attempting to close. At the moment his blood levels and medications were being adjusted moment to moment according to tests and results to make sure he did not throw a clot to his other leg, his heart, his brain or his lungs.

Cara did not ask for odds.

All the odds were bad.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Garrus watched in helpless horror, knowing that Yased would lose his leg if not his life, feeling Cara disappear into him as though she wished to vanish. She said nothing, glassy and horrified eyes with a blank finality he'd never seen in her. She did not grieve, she did not cry, she did not rail against whatever fate awaited the boy on the table.

She did not rail against whatever fate awaited her as she faced her grief… Senar's grief.

Every fear she'd had over the last weeks of maneuvering this moment revealed itself to be true in her eyes and he had no doubt she'd have given both lungs and both legs to avoid being the cause.

She passed directly into bleak acceptance, as though she skipped over grief like the space between valences of an electron in an atom, one state and then another state instantaneously.

He was so accustomed to her as his defiant virce and stalwart Limayeth that he was shocked by circumstance and the look in her eyes. She seemed an entirely new woman, shrunken and still,

no tears in her eyes, no sound from her ever-persuasive voice.

He thought about Senar's expressed wish that if something went badly with Yased perhaps he shouldn't be woken…

He imagined Cara insisting that it be her that woke him, insisting on being alone, insisted on telling Senar that his son had died after suffering the loss of his leg…

And that she would hope to be the one that would die in that moment, Senar provoked to anguished and effective vengeance, no doubt managing it from a sick bed in brief moments. Cara would welcome it. This woman would welcome that strike and would make sure she was close enough to allow it.

Garrus did not tighten his arms but did set his jaw. He couldn't let her do that. He couldn't let her offer her own life in trade, knowing that's what she was giving when she broke the news.

He had to pull her back from that, wanting to close his eyes and pray to his own Spirits, he instead spoke to her, tried to provoke her defiance. At him would be fine. Anything but this acceptance of the worst. "Cara, whatever happens, you're not telling Senar alone. I won't let you. You can't give him that opportunity and I can't let you. Every single one of us would regret it. I know you're big on martyrdom but no."

"I have to."

"No. No more fatalities. He's lost his leg but not his life. Cara, think. He can replace the leg. With the technology available, what we can provide for him, his leg will be able to do anything he wants. We can buy him a leg that cooks him breakfast and serves as a tool kit."

That got him a disconnected smile but this loop of her was set to avoid him and not listen to what he was saying. She said "I'd like to see a leg that cooked breakfast."

Garrus said urgently "Pay attention, Cara. You are not going to provoke Senar into blaming and killing you no matter what happens. I won't let you."

"You can't stop me." Her voice was dull and distant, that same acceptance he couldn't stand.

"The hell I can't. You might hurt my feelings, but I think Russ would enjoy the opportunity to restrain you for once when you're being absolutely unreasonable." She still wasn't listening at all, her eyes unwavering from the surgical table. Garrus said "Senar asked me to kill him if something happened to Yased. You… can't actually stop me from doing that. I hold onto you, I call Russ, I transfer ownership of virce, he restrains you. I fulfill a dying wish. Problem solved."

That got her attention. Her eyes snapped to his and she said with cold defiance and suddenly directed at him, scary "No, you won't."

She didn't explain how she had that much certainty and he didn't want to test that really, he preferred her like this, though the fear of what was happening on the surgical table was merged with the fear of what a virce could and would do.

Garrus said calmly "How about we try compromising? I don't kill Senar and you don't provoke your own death, we do something else? Take this moment and redefine a relationship that's consisted of ambushes and outmaneuvering and maybe try to work… together?"

"This was my decision, my ambush and maneuver, it's up to me."

"You're not only a you anymore, Cara, you're part of an us. I insist as part of us that you stay alive."

"He won't kill me."

"You could change that. You would change that."

She didn't argue. More defiance and her unwillingness to back down from being the scariest thing in the room.

Screw that. He was scary too. "Cara, we're going to watch and wait. They're still working. I really don't care what your obligation is to them, what you consider your obligation to be to them. You saved both their lives. You're trying to save Senar's. The fact that he doesn't want you to save it didn't stop you from doing it. The fact that you are grieving and helpless doesn't stop that I want to save yours and I will. Don't go there. I'm staying and you're staying and that's true. Be pissed off, be defiant, be angry at me, I don't care. Do it from a position of continuing to breathe. The answer to every problem is not throwing your life at it and I don't accept that math. Don't ask me to care more about your obligations than I do about you. It won't happen. This is tragic and you are numb and reactive. We… are both going to get through this and keep breathing. If you won't work with me, keep in mind that we're not on the Normandy. We're on Palaven. You never had any trouble throwing your authority around, now I won't hesitate in enforcing my own. You told Yased that here we'd be safe and have a family together. Those people are family, yes, but you… are my bond mate. If Yased dies, you will not follow. I don't trust you right now. That's probably true for most moments because you like to lie and get your way. I like to tell the truth and get my way. Get used to it. I'm not leaving your side, you're unarmed, and if you get rowdy, Russ is real close."

She was either lying or he really had gotten through to her, she didn't answer but the cold defiance left her face, she began to cry and he listened to her tearing sobs. She curled her body into his, more exhausted now than trying to cease to exist as she had before. The cold dispelled she was burning and wet, more complicated, weaker and stronger. He still didn't trust her to not be lying, but she was small and hand to hand wasn't her forte, she wasn't getting out of his sight and she wasn't breaking any news to anybody about anything alone or in lethal range.

They waited in whispering suspense, wondering at each change of surgical whim and necessity, several more hours. There was a bizarre hope that they continue to work on him so it didn't mean he was dead and stop working on him simultaneously so they'd have answers, most of their answers coming from the monitoring equipment they could see, tell-tale beats of a heart and measurements of respiration of a new lung.

Yased continued to breathe, but they did not know if he had lost oxygen to the brain, what the complications were, lungs no longer his biggest problem.

It was Karin that came to speak to them after the hours-long crisis seemed to settle back into a surgical ballet.

Karin had the best poker face in the galaxy, calm and reassuring, and Garrus didn't trust that was true any more than he trusted Cara's easy weight against his chest.

Karin said "He is going to survive. He lost his right leg. His lungs functioned well after adjustment of blood clotting factors. I'm afraid there was nothing we could do ultimately in order to save the limb. In order to maintain blood pressure to his heart, brain and lungs, to prevent infarction to those systems we in essence had to close the circuit, keep him from losing too much volume. He can be fitted with a prosthetic for the limb and with therapy it should serve him well. He tolerated the donation and transplant of the new lung very well otherwise. The prognosis for survival beyond this point is very good, he should recover well, barring any further unforeseen complications."

Garrus waited for Cara to speak, gave her a few seconds but when she didn't say anything answered for them both "Thank you, Karin."

Karin nodded and said "They will both be kept sedated for 48 hours."

So Garrus had 48 hours to try to get Cara to sleep and eat, and keep her from doing something stupid.

He wished himself good luck with that.

This time Cara did say evenly "Thank you, Karin."

No follow up questions, nothing else seemed to be of import except for surviving the next 48 hours, all four of them.

Karin seemed to expect more questions, but when she got none, she did not ask if they had any. She smiled her reassuring poker face smile, rose and went to go be useful.

Cara said calmly "You won't have to involve Russ."

"I love you, Cara. And I don't trust you an inch in this situation. You're staying with me and I won't ask you to promise because I won't believe your answer."

She sighed "Yeah. That's fair."


	52. Chapter 52

Garrus wanted to carry her out of there, swirl them in a stealth cloak and take her to the Madlis. He had no idea how or even where to go from here. She'd been staying in the hospital. He had to get her out of here.

He was trying not to panic but these circumstances lent themselves to panic.

He had a guilty and martyr-prone bond mate.

He had to consider Senar to be theoretically homicidal or suicidal. Garrus didn't think it would happen unless she specifically provoked it, but Senar was capable of physical and even sexual assault, mental assault, could potentially kill her. She was thrashing like bleeding prey in shallow water.

He really didn't think Senar would do anything of the sort…

Garrus thought Senar would focus on his son's recovery, because there would be a recovery thankfully. Hopefully.

But this was her and Garrus would not risk it. It was to protect all three of them. A grieving and passionate Senar and a guilty and throat-bared Cara…

No. Absolutely not.

He could not accurately predict either of them in this situation… let's face it, in any situation… except he knew that if the worst happened, he'd feel responsible for being the one who allowed it to happen, having known the potential and done nothing to prevent it.

Even dismissing assault or death as possibilities or even probabilities, Garrus didn't want her emotionally vulnerable and in that room with him. Senar would be capable of flaying her with a few sentences delivered too quietly for anybody else to hear. He might not be able to resist landing a crippling blow of opportunity, assassin training and inherent talent compelling him to seek and exploit weakness by his nature.

Garrus couldn't afford to experience shock himself. He had to protect all three of them from making critical mistakes.

He'd just made that man a Spectre and he wasn't sorry he'd done it, but Senar Tuelon by any name or lighting was not to be underestimated in potential.

Unfortunately Garrus had learned well enough that he couldn't trust either of them to be exactly sane on the subject of the other.

He'd seen her after Ashley's death. She was good at battle, she was good at in the fray and she was good at feeling what she needed to feel and sorting through it, but she needed time to feel, time to think.

She needed Garrus's help and direction whether she wanted to or not, she'd needed him to intervene on the Normandy after Ashley and she needed him now.

He said quietly "Cara, you need to sleep. You need to think. It's up to them now."

Her eyes lit with sense briefly, encouraging him that sanity was a possibility. She heard him, particularly the 'up to them' and she said a quiet "Okay."

"We're going to the Madlis. Not an official visit. Private entrance. You're going to shower and sleep and I'm going to be with you." He didn't tell her she was going to eat… but she was going to eat.

"Okay."

"I don't trust you right now Cara, and that's not my fault and that's not your fault. Shepard's job done, in situations like this your main experience is Cara's guilt and guilt is unpredictable. I don't want to keep you from grieving, but I do want to keep you from doing something destructive while you're under the influence of grief. It's like Reverie… we're going to have to wait to make decisions together until later. For now, I'm grieving but I'm not under as much influence, let me make your choices for you. Our choices."

She looked up at him and he felt as though he had caught and held a fragile strand of agreement and trust. He'd said the right thing.

… or she was a much better liar than he gave her credit in a moment like this and that was possible too. It didn't seem possible that the look on her face was the result of guile, but that's what guile did, didn't it?

He repeated "We'll get to the Madlis together. Then you'll have time to think and feel in privacy with my help, and later we can decide what to do… and what not to do."

He saw pain and grief swirl in her eyes, reflections of chaotic thought as she held out her small, pale hand and put it on his chest. She said slowly, calmly, not solidly but with some certainty "Okay. Let me… just…" She concentrated for a moment. He watched the storm in her eyes, but this was an echo of Cara's fluid strategy and not just grief. She closed her eyes, breathing hard, her facial expression echoing the shocks of her thoughts. She seemed to come to some conclusions, all painful. She said "You're right. Thank you. I need… I need you. Always have. Always will. About… telling the truth. You're right, you can't trust me but… I want to be trustworthy. I can… warn you about where and… why… and what I might do. I want to make choices with you. I don't have any major confessions and there's nothing wrong between us but I want it to stay that way. I have to… you're right. I can't… go in to see Senar alone. I don't think I can explain why… and that's the only reason why I don't try sometimes. I don't have words. But I should find words for you. For us."

Her eyes surged with her leap of intended faith, deep stormy green as her hand moved from his chest to hold his again. She said with a thread of Cara steel wrapping her words tightly and slowly as she played them out like a reinforced lifeline "I love you. I can't love you more. Thank you. You're… absolutely right. You can't trust me on my own but… you can trust me to love you, to be… Shepard… to make those choices. It may seem entirely out of the blue… wait, that's a human metaphor… Palaven's sky is… never mind. It may seem out of context. It's been bothering me but not bothering me and I don't know if you'll believe me or if it will bother you but… what it means to me doesn't matter as much as what it means to Senar. He asked me a question and I should ask you, you should know… Do you believe in an afterlife?"

Garrus was disoriented by the question. Her head was down and she seemed in thought trance, voice slow to counteract the wild spinning of emotion and possibility taking place in her eyes. She must… must have thought something could go wrong with the surgery, must have thought about her reaction to that, this wasn't entirely unexpected. She was retrieving those thoughts, those strategies. He hadn't really considered any afterlife since he was a child. He'd classified any afterlife as a myth along with flying virce and other fanciful ideas that faded next to holding a gun in his hands. Perhaps that was not poetic, but it was true. Turians didn't have a heaven like humans. The word 'Spirits' didn't apply to Turians after death. It applied to presences created by phenomena, avatars of the intangible like valor and sacrifice. He said cautiously, wondering if it was right or wrong, if his answer would invalidate the presence of her parents' voices "No. But if you want me to…"

She gave a soft choked laugh and then kissed him. Once again he felt he'd gratifyingly given the right answer, the stroke of her mouth and the jet of Reverie like needed heat through chilled flesh.

She pulled back, her warm eyes with sanity and love, pinkies under his mandibles and she said with reverence "But if you want me to…"

He didn't know what to say to that, so he watched her, waiting for context and partway not caring after seeing light and life in her eyes.

She said "Senar had asked me… not to believe in an afterlife so much as maybe grant it a possibility, a tiny possibility. He knows I love you and knows I always will… and he realized the only way he could ever have me would be if you and I no longer existed as you and I. I'd have to die to not love you." She laughed and then said "And stay dead… forget. Forget everything."

Cold shock splashed through him with her description of Senar's bizarre Spiritual flanking maneuver he hadn't anticipated, underlining how much he could not predict these two when left in a room alone together… Sanity and love asserted themselves in her face and she rushed to reassure him "This isn't as much about me as it is about him. He won't hurt me. I mean, you're right, I could… I could make him hurt me because… because I can. I just can. If I wanted him to, and yeah… maybe I feel like I deserve it, I can. But… back to the afterlife thing… he asked me to grant that maybe Drell and humans had an afterlife and Turians didn't, that if you hadn't asked… he wouldn't be taking anything from you or me, nothing already pledged. I knew… I knew I didn't believe. I knew it. I know… because I was dead. Two years, Garrus. Two years dead and… nothing. No new life, no parents, no visions of you… and I was already in love with you when I died. But I don't remember anything about those two years. Nothing. He asked me to promise him the tiny incalculable possibility that after I die, if Turians had no afterlife and I had no hope of finding you, that we choose to reincarnate and find each other. It's… a Drell myth. Manipar. Spirits that choose to reincarnate and seek each other rather than find the Shores. It was after the Drell Collector ship was rescued. He said he believed I might have a Drell soul, that Drell Gods would grant me Drell choices. That after what I'd done to save Drell, no Drell God would deny me that right. I told him yes because… because for me that possibility was 0… but he needed hope, wanted hope. He was dying, wanted to die… wanted to start over, with me, if he could. I didn't tell him the truth. I couldn't. It was… a dying man's hope and wish. The truth is that if you'd asked me the same question I would have told you I didn't believe… because you don't need that hope and neither do I. We have now. We have every now. I'm lucky and I have you. I don't believe in an afterlife, and I have experience on the subject. He knew enough to phrase it so all I acknowledged was a possibility… but with you I have reality. I couldn't tell him no and I should have, or I shouldn't have, I don't know. I couldn't… crush his dying hope on the basis of it being impossible. Not with the look in his eyes. But I gave him false hope. He begged me to do it, made it impossible for me to say no and he knows that… but do you understand? The only thing I can give the man is further trial and false hope. I feel guilty. I am guilty. He's deserving of love and devotion and this is what I've given him. False hope and…"

Garrus's jaw set and his mandibles trapped her hands, images of knowing Russ was in love with him and being unable to do anything about it… but telling him that if things were different…

Garrus said "I understand. I do. I…"

Cara smiled and said "Yeah. Russ."

"Not that he's asked me for an afterlife…"

"Because Turians don't have them…"

"Yeah."

"I don't think this human does either. Okay. There's some… significant honesty about a virtually insignificant lie. I owe Senar… so much… and… we're past math. I can't add this up or sort this through. And there's only one thing I can do once the math isn't about me or him… and it's about us."

"And what's that?"

"I can't see him. I can't… be the one to tell him. I can't even visit him. It would be an ambush, something to reassure me that I've given him the opportunity to be furious at me for all the things I've done… or not done… that he wants, that he deserves. Things I can't do. He needs his own time with his grief. I might… owe him the opportunity to strike… but that's guilt and you're right, he'd regret that. I can't give him the opportunity to strike. I feel guilty… but I don't feel guilty. He's going to live. It's selfish and it's even cruel and I arranged for that to be true. What I'm guilty about is not only false hope, which he knows because of how he phrased asking for my promise, only that I remain open to certain circumstances being true. No responsibility for making those circumstances true. What I'm guilty about is… I'm not sorry. I mean, I'm sorry for the loss of Yased's leg, of course… but I'm afraid Senar will look me in the eye and ask me if I'd do it again with the same outcome… or with Yased dead… and I don't know the truth there. I think… I think I'd do it again. I need to know and own my answers. He needs time to get to the place where he would be able to see and hear that I'm… not… sorry… without wanting to kill me, without me wanting to let that happen. I'm not the sorry he'd like me to be. If I walk in there penitent, the wrong sort of penitent… he'll know it, I'll know it, and it would be tantamount to saying I would kill his son to save him… not just take a chance on it, but do it knowingly. I may never know the answer to that question clearly enough to satisfy what he wants to see. I saved Senar's life, but I've taken his purpose. I've replaced his hope of finding his wife at the Shores with finding me in some Cosmic game of Spiritual hide and seek that I don't believe I will play. I've taken his son's lung and leg and I'm… unrepentant. He'll see it. He'll know it. I need to do for him what you're doing for me. Give time. Give distance. Give an opportunity to have a clear head."

Garrus half smiled "I don't think he's ever going to have a clear head about you."

"Yeah, well, clear…er? Before he went into surgery he told me to attempt forgiveness. I'm going to honor that. If you… say I'm being a martyr and I shouldn't throw my life at it… you're right. I can't tell you that he's going to like that or that it's going to work out well… but it will give him the time to decide who he is going to be. Someone in love with me or no longer in love with me. Someone who owed me their life but doesn't any longer. Someone to whom I owe my life and that won't change. That he knows I'm someone who convinced his son to give up a lung and a leg, potentially his life. That I'm someone who saved his son's life as a team with you. He deserves the dignity and time of patient choice and not forced confrontation. Garrus, I know I also owe to Senar in some ways the fact that I'm sitting here on your lap able to be sane…ish. Too much overwhelming significance and it would be poetic justice for him to take my hope, take my purpose, take my bond, take my life… because that's what I've done to him. I'll speak to Yased when he wakes. You and Karin decide what would be best for Senar. I'd suggest… I don't know. Seems manipulative… but it would give Senar what he wants to know. The best chance at seeing Yased conscious and talking, not sedated and worried about brain damage. I'm still worried about brain damage… but I trust Karin and I hope for the best. Keep Senar sedated until Yased is able to talk to him. Wake Yased first, let him come to terms before speaking to his father. I don't know if that's medically unethical or if you can impress upon Karin that it's to prevent at least potential for homicide. Senar is capable of complete forgiveness and absolute wrath and everything in between… possibly all at the same time. He's capable of lying about it, just as I am, and I can't tell you what he's going to do. I do know he won't kill Karin, he won't kill Yased. He might… he might try forgiveness. I wouldn't trust him if he said so, though, and he'd see that also. He deserves the chance to choose, to be believed, to own his own truth without me deciding or provoking it. I have to be as merciless about ending this as I was about beginning it. It's not about my grief or my responsibility. It's about what the two of them want to do about it and how they wish to hold me responsible or forgive me. My absence from his decision process will be the equivalent of pain relief after surgery. Let the injuries have a chance to potentially heal before he expresses how he feels about them. I will attempt forgiveness, I'll await their judgment. I'll accept what they decide together. Senar will respect and understand that. He won't like it, but he won't like anything I do… or have done… mostly. And that makes me sad. I'd like for him to be happy but I can't see how he can find his way there with me in the middle of his Path."

"Cara, what you've done, what he's asked… you didn't make him do that. He knew what he was doing. He is entirely aware of his own crafted temptations and traps and he's not an innocent bystander you forced into service. He'll want to talk to you. You know this won't go somewhere that he gives up. Would you look him in the eye and take back the promise to be his Manipar?"

She breathed in and closed her eyes, pain and realization "No. I can't. Even knowing the chance is zero… there was and is a reason to grant him hope. I see no reason to take it, considering its value to me, and he knew that before he asked. Again, he's not worthy of trust… but trusting him is the only way to get to where I want, some sort of peace, not all-out war. I can't afford to be at war with Senar Tuelon. I don't… want… to be at war with him. Ever."

"All right. It matters to him. He'll be angry but… I promise you that this won't turn out with Yased and Senar leaving for a dry retirement colony. And now you won't tell Senar 'no' to anything reasonable he asks for, and he's going to want to be back on the Normandy. You know that, I know that, he knows that. It might take some time, but he's not going to give up his potential eternity with you because you're in love with me. I also don't think he's going to kill either of us, but he wouldn't be sorry if I were suddenly gone and he wasn't the cause. You're vulnerable to him, Cara. Not in the way he wants, but he's patient. His answer to everything is going to be 'not yet.' He's waiting until that moment. Once Yased is entirely healed… his thoughts will turn back to his ideal inevitable. You."

She didn't argue with him at all, those words passing through her without a conflicting ripple "I'll always be willing to talk to him. He just needs to ask for me. Or find me. He's a Spectre now, it won't be hard. I won't hide. I just won't make myself a target for unleashed grief. I'm going to let them decide." She looked calm, took a deep breath and said "It depends upon Yased mostly. It's about him. I can make it about him, and not about me. If Senar or Yased wish to make it about me, then I'll give them the time they need to come to that conclusion without me muddying already churned waters." She closed her eyes and said "He asked me to not witness the surgery, to greet your family. I refused. I insisted upon hovering."

Garrus smiled "He asks for the strangest things."

"He asks me to do what I don't want to do a lot."

"Yeah. He can't seem to help twisting your arm where he can. I'd say I don't understand but that would make me a hypocrite. Not like I'm going to stop sending him a standing order for a basket of fruit and tea. Now I'm going to double it and add one for Yased. You don't want to meet my family?"

"I'm terrified of meeting your family."

"But now you'll do it for him?"

"Yeah. And for us. I can at least do some good. I'll wear the green and the gold as he advised. Will an official meeting be broadcast?"

"Probably, yes. It'll at least make Cipritine local social news."

"Good. Then he'll see it, and he'll know I took his advice and I'm taking his advice."

"So you're going to be a dutiful, forgiving martyr in his name?"

"A dutiful, merciless strategist lying in stylized wait. Just like him. You've proven it isn't about me. It's about you. It's about Yased. It's about Senar. It's about your family."

"It's about us."

"Yes. And you love me, and I love you. I want to love Senar but I've succeeded in generating false hope and maiming, emotional and Spiritual, now physical. I love Yased but I need to be able to expect and accept rejection. I want to love your family but I find myself… lacking in Turian ideals at the moment. Most moments."

"Didn't listen past you loving me and me loving you." He teased.

She smiled and kissed him again "So you don't have to ask why I'm doing what I'm doing. For 'us' and the definition of 'us' with just you and me stays the same. Every other 'us' – I'll do my best for them, but I can't count on being loved by them."

"You are and will be loved by all of them, Cara."

She smiled but some of the grief and hurt came back into her eyes, the storm of strategy fading so she re-experienced the river of pain. She was at least more stable, more solidly herself as she said "Garrus, I love you so much. I'm terrified of destroying your legacy, of ruining Senar's future and Yased's promise of a life, breaking Spirits… disappointing parents."

Garrus gave himself more fully to her begun and broken kisses, weaving together threads of Reverie, threads of them, that focused sense of the two of them being all that mattered. "Cara… love… I'm afraid you being merciless to Senar Tuelon will gain more of his respect and he'll fall for you harder. Presenting yourself as green and gold Shepard will dazzle my family. I fully support your mercilessness. We all… owe you our lives and our livelihoods and if other people don't appreciate it, that means more time for me being the main beneficiary."

It occurred to him again that she could be lying and he really did not care at all, admiring the grace and curves of her mind and strategy, mercilessness and vulnerability. She and Senar were very much alike and he couldn't blame Senar for doing his best, turning her head to the imaginary to gaze, twisting her arm as far as it would go.

Only to find that she did not have that sort of imagination and her arm twisted voluntarily… and only so far.

But they all knew… venom could replace imagination.

This was a real risk.

But she was right and declaring war was unwise on so many levels.

Garrus had his own math and he couldn't make it add up either except that 1 + 1 = MINE and if Senar sought the same math, he'd be a hypocrite to blame him. The man had excellent taste and would not give up.

Senar deserved the opportunity to make his own choices. With Cara's perspective it seemed less likely that Senar would hurt her. Given time he would be patient and determined. Now potentially more so, with a lean toward commensurate ruthlessness, but Garrus doubted his methods would alter.

Garrus would prefer to eliminate all risk to Cara, but he couldn't bring himself to do it in any way. Once again, he had to wait and see. Senar would decide if he was going to be a benefit or a liability, and he was capable of lying about or delivering both. They couldn't trust his words, but the man had proven through his actions that he'd earned a Spectreship and respect from both Cara and Garrus.

From everyone.

Cara would not banish Senar as she might, as she should. She still needed him as an asset, was willing to excuse him as a liability. She was still willing at this moment to walk in, physical and emotional throat bared, green eyes with her bizarre defiance and the equivalent of 'kill me, do it' as a dare.

The Madlis had a lot of security cameras, she wasn't going anywhere. He didn't even need to ask Russ to act as sentry. She was going to be anchored at her Turian bond mate's side, arm consensually twisted, and he would zealously protect her from the imaginary and the real, the potential and the illusory. He believed her reasoning, didn't think this was a feint where she would slip his voluntary arm lock on her in order to throw her life at an impassioned, grieving Drell for the drama of it.

Minimizing drama suited Garrus just fine.

He didn't care about the afterlife, understood the hope, understood why she hadn't told Garrus about Manipar before but told him now. He believed her about that, that it didn't matter and she felt guilty because it was false hope, but hope Senar wanted.

He understood the power of hope. He'd been driven by it since meeting her. Someone like Senar needed her brand of hope and inspiration if he were to ever be a better man in any way, if he were ever to be a man who deserved her, even in another life.

He murmured "If there's an afterlife, I'd find you first, just like I did this time. I'm not worried. I am damned well going to take advantage of every now I have with you."

His eyes were closed to better feel the warm stream of her kiss and hear her voice as she whispered "I was never worried about that. Thank you for twisting my arm."

She was determined to comfort and reassure him, and he was going to take it. He didn't ask if it was thanks for the press conference that took away her choices about their bond and her enforced solitude, for him restraining her against grief, for the fact that her arms were his and he could twist them any way he wanted… or any other reason. Any and all, didn't matter. She was still worried about everything else and not wanting to appear that way. His arms tightened around her. Reverie, love and admiration had him heading hazily down the path of about to mercilessly claim his bond mate in the surgical gallery.

She was going to have enough trouble walking. He shouldn't make it harder on her.

He really… really wanted to make it harder on her.

Instead he stood, lowered her to the ground and allowed the kiss to end, the melting chaotic green of her eyes something he wanted to lose himself in as soon as possible.

She didn't want Senar… or she did in imaginary and theoretical places, but she would never make that real as long as Garrus placed himself firmly in her Path, which he would do at every opportunity.

All that remained for Senar was what was left when she died, which she believed to be 0 and Garrus believed meant she was his and would be in any life, any afterlife, definitely this life.

She didn't want the status and wealth of the Vakarian family or the power of the Councilorship unless she was Shepard. She'd meet them clothed in symbolism and all her Cara reasons for things.

She did want Garrus, and had for a long time. She loved him.

The entirely inappropriate surge of lust and love aided by Reverie made it hard for him to ease breathing and plates but he opened his eyes and saw the remnants scattering the operating room, green blood and significance. He slid his hands through her hair and then down her back, pressing her against him while mourning the loss of the kiss. He would have 'us' later. He would have 'us' always and he was blessed. He didn't need to claim anything imaginary, he had her, everything real about her.

Wordlessly he held her until she could steadily step away, which she did as soon as she was able.

When she was steady on her feet he held her face between his wide palms, pale skin contrasting with his hide, the sense of enveloping her welcome. "We're going home. Our home. Together. We're going to face everything together. I believe you, Cara. Yes, you're a merciless, untrustworthy liar… who loves me and has proven that for years. Senar loves you and wants you and that's true and that can stay true. You can love him and even want him and you can both share as many dreams or possibilities as two merciless liars can concoct between themselves. I'm real. We're real. That's all that matters. They are both going to live. Harm has come to Yased, but not unforgivable harm. The reality here, Cara, is that you saved Senar's life. Most people would appreciate that, but he's a contrary bastard and that's okay. I'll thank you for saving his life. Yased will thank you… it might take a while. Senar never will, but he should. Your influence on his life has not been a bad thing, Cara. He wants you to be indebted so he can collect. I won't let that happen and you won't let that happen. Stay merciless. You saved his life. You gave the son back to the father and now you've given the father back to the son for a longer timeframe. A sane person would know that is worth a lung and a leg. I know it. They can take that chance or ruin that chance, but if they blame you… then that is not your fault, that is their grief and failure to understand. You didn't want him to lose a leg. You didn't cause him to lose a leg. You did everything, I did everything to extend their chances for a good outcome. Yased is in the best place he can be for a prosthetic and therapy. He'll have family and be cared for, if he wants it, for his lifetime. You and I have given him a home, a future, a family, a father. You've given Senar… a conscience. It's painful and he hates it and that's a shame and that sucks for him, but Cara… you are a good thing. Senar wants you, covets you, will manipulate you into believing you owe him, will continue to give until you feel the weight of that debt… and I know you feel it. But he is doing it on purpose, Cara. Remember that. You didn't cause it or provoke it. You didn't want that or make that happen any more than you wanted Yased to lose his leg. You tried to prevent it. He is choosing to do it. He will choose to do it again. I can't blame him and if he had any other path to seduction, he'd likely take that, but he doesn't. He can only count on your guilt to deliver your vulnerability. Don't be guilty. Come home with me. Stay with me. Meet our family. Do not let Senar Tuelon turn a gift into a debt. Senar and Yased are going to sleep for two days and start to heal and you… are going to stay with your bond mate, who knows you are a gift. Practice not being a martyr. The Madlis is not a debt, Cara, it's a gift. Family. It's really a miracle. Don't miss it."

Her smile was radiant "You know something? You're very smart, Garrus Fanning."

"It's all the lust. Keeps me on my game."

She laughed and said "Me too. Please… take me home… please stay with me. Please…"

"I should warn you that the Madlis has lots of security cameras."

"Oh, good. Then you won't be sneaking out on me."

He laughed "I love you. So much. You scare the hell out of me, but I love you so much."

"I think you like being scared."

"Then I'm in luck. I chose well."

"And I was chosen well."

"That whole thing about not feeling guilty about Senar incurring debt doesn't apply to me. You can feel indebted to me all the time. I'd like that."

"I do."

"Oh good, then you won't be surprised that a lot of the next two days will be spent barely able to think."

"Sounds like heaven."

"Meet you there."


	53. Chapter 53

Garrus watched Cara move through the next two days, kaleidoscopic perfection of her having tailored herself to each moment.

She was a warm, sweet and vulnerable lover with soft skin and melted green eyes, expressing her giving nature in every line and gesture, pressed to plate, wishing to be nowhere else.

She was a reserved and sedate, elegant and gracious addition to the Vakarian clan. Garrus suspected that she had learned everything she could of Turian custom. She charmed everyone, bearing almost no Turian ideals as she said, but creating a moment where human ideals or human rarity found her place. With his mother's joyous welcome before cameras, his father's reserved but possibly genuine, possibly manufactured pride, Solana's repressed enthusiasm and curiosity setting the stage Cara was joyous, reserved and enthusiastic in perfect turns like a dancer.

Garrus was charmed and set off balance, knowing he was good at social and political maneuvering, but the transformation of needed guile from Cara to Shepard… once again in a new setting…

He could almost believe she'd played him every moment of their lives and this was the true Cara.

She was that good.

He was that impressed.

He was that scared.

After discussion with Karin, Yased was woken first, Cara sitting at his bedside, Garrus standing behind her with his hand on her shoulder. Cara kept her hand and arm carefully not touching Yased, though he had faith the 'real' Cara wanted to be gripping his hand when he woke. Her face was as good as Karin's poker face and Garrus tried to do the same, though his heart was pounding hard enough he didn't think he'd be able to hear anything else.

Cara here also was tuned perfectly, Garrus almost wanting to believe she was this easy and this steady, because that was less painful than the fact that each of these performances was tearing chunks out of her internally, as she had to be someone else when what she wanted to do was hide and cry.

Spirits, he wanted to stand in front of her and shield her from it all, but she wouldn't allow it. She'd made her concession regarding Senar and that was all she'd grant. She turned to sharp focus on practical things she could address – spending enough time in bed with her bond mate to set him at ease, public introduction to her family as her internal world dissolved in apprehension, facing the boy whose leg and lung she had cost him and whose life she had saved and risked.

Garrus had asked her in Reverie, bodies joined and his talon tips tracing around her eyes, with the inherent lack of caution brought by the state, a curious foray into the precise machinations behind the green eyes he was gazing into "Which one of you is real?"

She hadn't pretended to misunderstand the question, her fingers caught and twined with his, an answering lack of caution, softness and her generosity in her voice "Every me loves you. There are people I have to be… but when I'm with you, I get to be someone I want to be. That isn't even me when I'm alone, and maybe I'm not… real… until I'm with you. This is who I want to be most real. But I need you for that. I need to be able to love you to be the most real I can be."

He understood that because it was true in a metaphoric and practical way for himself. Who would Vakarian be without Shepard, without Fanning? He was his most real when he was with her. She had made him aspire to be his best self. At least at the time he had understood it perfectly because that's what Reverie did. Out of Reverie it was a cautionary tale of her malleability to circumstance and how he was responsible for shaping her world, inner and outer, and how much power and responsibility that gave him.

Now Yased would determine her 'real' in many ways. Garrus had wanted to coach him, shield her, but she wouldn't allow it.

Cara told Yased softly in words he was certain had been parsed, chosen, rehearsed "Welcome back. The lung transplant went brilliantly, your father is recovering, still sleeping, we woke you first. He's fine. Your lungs are fine. With your surgery there was a complication and you suffered a clot to your thigh and they could not recover your limb. You've lost your right leg below the hip. I'm so glad you're both alive and I'm so sorry about your leg. You can get a prosthetic and therapy here at the hospital."

She didn't try to mitigate the blow or assure him that all would be well. Facts were given and conclusions left open to the boy's interpretation.

Gratitude and shock lit Yased's face and then his eyes closed. Yased's shoulders slumped and then in an outrush of breath he said "Keep my dad asleep."

Garrus's brow plate shot up but he imagined Cara kept her poker face.

It wasn't poker for her. Her life face. Her non-real face. The face she had to make real to save lives… or take them.

Yased swallowed and said "I… I don't…"

Cara said softly "Breathe. Take your time. If you want to think for a little while…"

Yased waved a hand "I don't need to think. I know. I need… oh… don't wake him up. He…" Yased's eyes slewed guiltily to Garrus and then back to Cara. Yased looked determined, and for a moment he almost looked like his father might look if he allowed emotion on his face. It was disorienting, endearing, all the attempts at machinations and manipulations that came so easily to his father, etched in lines there, along with anguish. "Cara… he's in love with you. I made him do this but…"

Cara reached out her hand and took Yased's, who clung to her.

Garrus knew that feeling, imagining Cara's anchoring green in the storm of Yased's emotions and conclusions of consequence. She said through what must have been a smile on her face "Yased. Look at me. I know he's in love with me. Garrus knows he's in love with me. I'm in love with him also, in my way. I also love you. You're both family. We'll get through this together."

Yased looked at her as though she did not comprehend but must have been relieved at what he saw there. Yased said "Let me tell him. Don't wake him up yet. Let me…"

Cara said "All right. But please remember… I provided for this to happen."

Yased waved his arm "I'm a little sick of all you heroes, you know. It's my damned leg."

Garrus barked a laugh he couldn't help and then Cara lowered her head, shoulders shaking with nervous laughter and what was obviously relief "Yes. It is… or was… and will be again… your… leg. I'll help any way I can."

Garrus took exception to the pronoun "We'll help any way we can."

Yased's hand lowered, he squeezed Cara's hand and then retrieved his own hand, gripped his hands together "Yeah… I get that. I think… you guys have done enough for now. He's really going to be okay?"

Cara retrieved her hands graciously and said "He's going to be better than okay."

Yased's hand tentatively reached down to the void below his hip, where his leg had been. Yased looked bleak, determined, and he looked only like himself, not what his mother must have looked like, not what his father looked like, and Garrus thought flashing in his eyes he saw Cara's influence for a second… then he looked like himself, a traumatized and struggling boy in a hospital bed missing something but determined not to lose something else. "Give me… two hours. Then let me be there when he wakes up. I'll talk to him." He looked again guiltily at Garrus, then Cara, then back to the ceiling. "Alone."

Cara nodded, stood, and leaned over to hug him, their hands to the back of each other's head, an embrace of passing understanding. She kissed his forehead and withdrew, the expression of softening affection on Yased's face then hardening back to bleak determination before they turned to leave, consult Karin and let the boy be his own hero.

Karin agreed the delay was medically negligible, allowed the two hours as prudent to allow Yased to reach equilibrium without having to mention the word 'homicide' or any other word with 'cide' at the end.

The chunks torn from her were apparent when his cool and calm Cara dissolved into sobs as soon as they'd crossed over the threshold into their private apartments at the Madlis, there to wait and console each other as they could, helpless again to control the outside world. They were near guilty to have such comfort and love in each other but nowhere near giving up a moment of it.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Senar's immediate wash of emotion upon waking up was disappointment. He had hoped upon closing his eyes and being quiescently obedient that as a consequence and poetic irony he would die on the table. That was what surrender had meant to him, symbolically and theoretically literally. His wish had not become truth.

His second wash of emotion was gratitude upon seeing Yased's face at the side of his bed. Yased was in a mobility chair, looking down at him, their hands held. Yased smiled and said "Welcome back."

Senar smiled at him "You are well?"

Yased nodded and said "Well enough. Lung transplant went well for both of us, but I lost my leg to a blood clot."

Then the third wash of emotion began with a resumed surge of reinforced disappointment at the lack of his own death or complication, gratitude that Yased had lived and then fury.

He was familiar with disappointment, proximity to but not the right to his own death, fate's cruelty and responsibility for consequences. He had chosen to sink beneath the sand before he had surrendered and he remained there, coiled and cold and of his chosen seeming, not at all of his inherent nature.

The Gods deserved his scorn and they would receive that, as they did after Irikah was taken and tortured. Fate and Senar were not on respectful terms. He was a father and wished to be a deserving father, therefore Yased would receive what was asked. Yased was here alone, maimed, the etched lines of his face showing determination and fear. Fear of what Senar would do and to whom.

With the ease of water following gravity's call he gave all appearance, all seeming of what was demanded of him. Acceptance and forgiveness. The duty to conform to authority's demand was more familiar to him than his own will.

Perhaps he would someday make duty and fatherhood something real, at the moment he could only grant the appearance. Senar's voice was not his own but rarely had been in his life, his will was not his own but that was familiar and in a way as alluring as sinking to battle sleep. He said with the disconnected sense of self that was himself "Yased, all that matters to me is that you are well and you are here. You will get a new leg and I will stay with you and be your legs until you walk on your own and grow tired of my interference."

Yased swallowed, narrowed his eyes and said in confused hoarseness "You're not mad? I mean… that you're breathing is all that matters to me but… you're…"

"I am well, you will be well, nothing else matters."

"Dad. I'm not… I'm not blind. Don't be mad at her."

As Senar did not and would not discuss Cara at all with his son, he redirected the conversation "Mad at her? Dr. Chakwas? Did something happen during your surgery? Was some error made?" He allowed just enough anger to thread his voice.

Yased shook his head quickly "No! No. I mean… I mean Commander Shepard. Cara."

Senar appeared to relax slightly and then asked with some bewilderment "Why would I be angry at Commander Shepard? Because of her we are both alive. Because of her we are here together."

Yased nearly snapped with frustration "I'm not stupid OR blind. You were angry that we did this before I lost my leg. You're in love with her."

Senar's face clouded with confusion and then the dawning of an idea that had not at all occurred to the man he must seem to be. The sands are deep, my son, and you will not stumble there and become lost. I shall draw you a map. "Yased. Please. You are mistaken. I am, and have always been in love with your mother."

"That doesn't mean you can't also… be in love with her."

"That is true but not truth. I admire her. I do love her… in my way… but perhaps… perhaps you see what is in your heart? Are you not enamored of Commander Shepard yourself? It would be understandable if you were, but do not confuse my heart with yours. I know my Path, it is at your mother's side at the Shores."

Yased's eyes were cast into simple confusion, defensive thought and self reflection. He stuttered "What? No. No, I'm not. I…" but there was enough affection and care there to create enough doubt, enough reason, enough distraction. Yased took what was offered, what was needed. Assurance. Peace. Calm.

Senar squeezed Yased's hand and said in conspiratorial hushed tone "It does not matter, for either of us. Your mother awaits me, Cara is with Garrus and regardless of any feelings of yours, she will remain our family. I will say nothing to her or Garrus of any affection you might carry for her other than familial, I promise you."

Yased's eyes closed on disoriented confusion and a deeply drawn breath. He sat suspended, trying to navigate. He let out the breath in a patient exhale, finding his fight countered and his path without the confirmation he sought. He allowed it to drop, as intended. Senar would feel satisfied if it were not for the rage and the cold, things that would not touch his son. Yased opened his eyes and said "Are you okay? Are you in any pain?"

Senar thought only briefly 'I am pain' but said reassuringly, which was true, no physical pain permitted under Dr. Chakwas's careful watch "No, I am not in pain. My breath comes easy and all is well. Yased, thank you. Thank you for your lung and for risking your life again to reach me. Thank you for your courage. Thank you for your loyalty. I hope someday to deserve your sacrifice."

He did not speak to or of Irikah, sundered from her in many ways, unwilling to expose her to the lies he told their son, as he spun his reassuring deceptions, as he chose truths to solidify from smoke.

As all that filled the dark places was being bound to Cara in more depth, more choices made, more debt, in some ways a satisfaction that would not be expressed in Yased's presence or sphere of comprehension, ever.

Manipar might begin with even footing, now any law of what humans term karma would draw her to him. That is why the balance would never, ever be zero and why he would not forgive. She must face him. In all things she must face him and he would accept no less.

Yased's smile was beaming as he said "Just keep breathing, Dad. That's what I want."

"Then that is what I shall do for you. You will walk again. You will dance again, Yased. We will make that true."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Garrus left her sleeping, headed back to the hospital after giving Yased time to speak to his father. Rehab therapy would begin for both of them, more extensive for Yased. Although Cara agreed not to speak directly to Senar, Garrus had things to relay on his own, things from her, things from him, things from them.

Checking in with Yased, the boy seemed vaguely bewildered and with the echo of guilt of looking at Garrus as though he'd come to wrong conclusions. Yased said "He's fine. He seems fine. I guess… I think I was wrong. There wasn't anything to worry about."

Garrus smiled and said "I'm glad that's the case. Do you have everything you need?"

"Yes. I'm headed toward rehab, dad will stay with me. We're good."

"You'll let me know if you need anything?"

"Yeah. Seems you've got everything covered. Thank you, sir."

"Garrus."

"Thank you, Garrus."

"You're welcome, Yased. Here's my hope for a fast recovery."

Well. Now he was confused. That seemed to be standard. Keeping in mind Senar was capable of forgiveness and wrath and everything in between he should be grateful for the reminder that he had no idea what was coming?

He was not grateful.

Entering Senar's room, the man was reclining, relaxed and seemingly contemplative, his dark eyes raising from watching the door, likely at the height of Cara's head, slowly accepting that instead the visitor was Garrus. The Drell blinked slowly and Garrus asked politely "How are you feeling?"

A raised brow ridge and a pointed rejoinder "Are you certain you wish to know my feelings, Garrus?"

"About your lungs, certainly."

"My lungs… my bargained and paid-for lungs are well, so I hear, my breath is easy."

"Glad to hear it."

"Where is she?" Polite. Succinct.

"Not. Here."

"I see. Has she done herself harm? Is she well?"

Off balance again. "No. Or… yes. She's done herself harm, she'd rather have given up her own limbs and her own lungs and maybe if left with a dull knife for too long she'd do that herself. I'd rather not be away from her for long."

"Whose idea was it for Yased to wake me?"

"It was his."

"And who provided him with that choice? Was she there for him?"

"I wouldn't allow her to wake you. She was there for Yased. He asked to be the one who woke you."

"So my son was placed in the position of absorbing the shock of the loss of his limb and managing his father's temper immediately upon waking?"

"Yes. But he would have to deal with the loss of his limb either way and your temper is not to be underestimated, something that was foremost in three minds, enough for all of us to be concerned and for us to not argue with Yased when he chose what it was he wanted to do without us prompting him."

"Cara does not need to be protected from me, she needs to be protected by me. She has done herself harm. Send her to me."

Garrus hesitated. He still had enough 'absolutely not' to go a few rounds. She'd said Senar had to ask… he'd asked. He couldn't very well ask "Do you intend to strangle my bond mate?" because there was no evidence of that, but there was never any evidence at any crime scene left by this man. He said slowly "And what will you say to her?"

"Whatever is appropriate to thank her and protect her."

"I'm really fucking sick of 'appropriate' from you."

"You would prefer inappropriate? Garrus, has your bond mate ever explained Pon-Ifa to you?"

"Only that she'd kick my ass at it."

"As she has and will mine. One of the key mechanics of the game is hijacking. She hijacked my son, and well. Now I live a longer life and he has a father. Does she not deserve thanks for arranging for that?"

"And what does that have to do with Pon-Ifa?"

"Because there are games and those games have rules, and she is a master of the game. If you wish to place yourself on the board as a player you will find yourself a piece in short order. Denied the opportunity to thank her appropriately, shall I instead turn my attention to you? She turned her attention to my son. She follows her own rules, rules I understand. I also understand your rules, which are more generous in terms of moral ambiguity. She works with integrity and purpose. You are more selfish and that can be arranged. Are you certain you know what I am after, Garrus? You believe I covet your bond mate for her power and her prestige. Perhaps I can be convinced to covet you instead, hijack you as fully as she has hijacked my son. It was you in fact that saved his life. You that provided his home, his family, his future. Perhaps you are a greater prize than she. You would certainly be easier."

"What in actual fuck are you talking about?"

"By her rules, love is a gift, forgiveness is assured, sacrifice is implied. I have wished to learn her rules and I have. I have treated her according to those rules and will continue to do so. I will not take her as she does not take. Her rules. My bond is to her will. You, on the other hand, you simply took her. By your rules that would be a much simpler path to taking what she loves, if that is what you believe I want. Hemorus has certainly not been swayed by any of Cara's achievements or virtues, he remains fully your man. Perhaps I should take his cue, do the same, find a convenient wall behind you and see if Reverie and bond can be broken by venom. I believe they could be. If I wished her dead, she would be dead. If I wished you dead, or mine, you would be those things."

"What you want is for her to owe you."

"And she does. Now even more than she has at any other time. She has given me much. I am a Spectre, I am healthy, my son will recover, I will return to the Normandy."

"Walk away. Stay with Yased."

"Block my path to Cara and see what comes of that, Garrus. She is in no danger for she follows her nature, and her nature is understood. I understand you as well. You are less of a challenge, but if you must be distracting then prepare to be a distraction. You fear my unpredictability and my temper for good reason. I doubt very much that Cara has asked you… to ask me… to walk away. She needs me."

"No, walking away is my idea and I stand behind its merits. She doesn't need this."

"She will not get this, Garrus. Only you. I can make allowances for blundering and I can and will give you what is considered to be fair warning among the honest. You are at least honest and I can give you that."

"And you expect me to trust you?"

"You have no choice. She owes me. She needs me. Not in the way you think, but in a way she understands and I understand. If I know my Lasam, she agreed to allow you to speak to me but she has not said she would not see me. I imagine I must ask. So I asked you and I will ask again. Send her to me. Now. We will let it stand that you delivered a message and I granted my reply. I will wait until you deliver that message and we will see how long it takes her to come to me. I imagine it will be swift. Beyond that, if you wish to set yourself between us then be prepared for an introduction to Pon-Ifa. I will find my own time frame and ask in my own way that she attend. Your presence is no longer required and is not required. She will come, and she will come alone, and she will leave when she wishes to leave, under her own will, as has always been the case. If you cannot credit my trust, then at least credit my pride. I do not wish to steal your bond mate. She must earn me, in fact she may need to beg me for the right to stand by my side if it is to come to that, but your bond mate will not be stolen from you with whispers and kisses. Her will stays Whole and as long as you live, as long as you do not blunder with her as spectacularly as you have right now, she is yours. Your will, on the other hand, is negotiable if you press me. You are an attractive man, Garrus. I would certainly enjoy taking you from her as you took her from herself. If you wish to ask which man here overrode her will and did not ask her for her consent, much less waited until she begged for the right, look at yourself perhaps more closely before you accuse me of what you fear based on what you know you did. I am not you. You should perhaps be grateful for that in ways you have not previously appreciated."

Garrus smiled "I'm more and more convinced this was not at all a blunder."

"Perhaps you should leave before I become more convinced that it was."

"Feel better."

"I shall. And soon."

"You're an attractive guy too, Senar. Maybe I'm looking forward to it. I'd love to see you try to explain that one to her. She saves your life and gives you back your son, you repay her by seducing her bond mate. That sounds like she'd think that was fair. You've got a better shot at me than her, though, clearly. She would… never… beg you. You've got a great fantasy life though."

"If you wish to provoke me, I find myself uninspired and advised to rest. Perhaps later."

"That's fine, and I'd advise further rest. Don't make it about me. Much as that sounds like fun, don't get me wrong. No, I really don't want to play. I don't have to play. I'm a messenger informing you that the move she was persuaded to make by your son and by me was to not make a move. I'm convinced we were right. It's true that only you can reassure her, protect her from your own worst intentions. Are you going to? Or will you use this excuse to hurt her because you can't do anything else and you hate helplessness? Do not let her provoke you into striking. Believe it or not I've been trying to protect you as well from making a mistake that you would regret. We all know you are not inclined to thank her, even if you owe her the breath you might use to manipulate her guilt into debt. Despite your obvious desire, which you've somehow convinced your son doesn't exist and congratulations on that, you've done her, and me, a lot of good. My Avah has also advised me I can't kill you. You deserved to not be ambushed by her guilt when you first woke up. We thought it was best that you see your son awake and without brain damage, as that would be your first concern. She chose to make it about both of you and not about her, and that was also… a good move. Her best move. It's clear you've got your wits. This is about her willing to die for you, for what she feels she's cost you. For what you both know she cost you. Something I can't change but I can ask you to not make it worse. If you don't want to count any debt to her as valid but all her debts to you magnified, that's not by her rules. Didn't you say forgiveness was implied? Don't make her pay. Please. If you pride yourself so much by knowing and abiding by her rules and will, follow them."

"As you wish."

"Thank you."

Garrus left at that, oddly reassured and again knowing he'd been played and just like with Cara, it didn't matter. What was going to happen was going to happen and he'd done all he could to protect her. She was going to walk in on whatever Senar planned.

He went back to the Madlis, found her pacing, opened his arms and she ran to him. He said "He asked to see you. The rest was weird."

"Weird how?"

"Apparently he's convinced Yased that he's not in love with you."

"Well… that's good."

"Also, he threatened to kiss me if I didn't get out of his way."

She giggled "He what?"

"No, seriously. He said he'd seduce me like you hijacked his son."

"That man is good with the creative threat."

"You're not worried?"

"It doesn't… really suit his end goal. He's just trying to unsettle you."

"Consider me unsettled. And oddly turned on."

"Right?"

"He's probably got a timer. He said you'd show up fast."

"He's right. If you'll let me go."

"Oh yeah. I'm letting you go. Whatever he has planned, he's… I have no idea. But he says you need him to protect you."

"In this case… yeah."

"Go. Unsettle me when you get back."

"Yes sir."


	54. Chapter 54

Senar closed his eyes after Garrus… Fanning… left. Senar was infuriated and exposed, having wanted to provoke the Turian to the violence he was accused of being willing to inflict upon Cara.

There was no need to tell the man that had Cara been alone upon waking him, there was no doubt Senar would have wished to take full advantage of her vulnerability.

Would he have?

He had been given no opportunity to discover.

Even before the surgery he'd postulated it, he'd warned Garrus specifically, he'd warned Cara with his silence because she already knew.

What he… wanted… was not violence.

Yes, it began that way. For all the times Cara infuriated, charmed and tempted him it certainly began that way in fantasy. He needed that. He needed his speed and his strength and his ability to pin her, to the bed, to the floor, to the wall, to a desk. To anything. Gods knew he could and he wanted to. It had often occurred to him to try in her cabin, that was a favored setting.

Regardless of the surface to which she was pinned, the element he required in his fantasy was that she was pinned to him and by him, shocked and wanting green eyes a necessity. The violence was only there to prove that he was absolutely serious, expecting her to be serious in return.

He knew exactly how her body felt pressed to his, the scent of her, her trembling shock and trust. He knew that from Beckenstein, from stroking his fingertips over her broken ribs. Her facing him was a favored position due to its reflection of remembered reality, but he also wanted her back pressed to his chest, her head to the side. Always green-eyed shock, trust, forgiveness, giving… so many things she was known for lavishly providing to her loved ones. He was loved by her, he was wanted by her, those were truths. There were merits to be explored in this position, keeping her pinned, trembling acquiescence in the lines of her body. He did not need venom. He did not need whispers. Silence and inevitability as he traced the curve of her trembling lower lip with a steady finger, down her throat, along her collarbone, her arm, her waist, her hip, down to her ass. Her other hand would slowly twine fingers with his tightly, held against the wall by both their wills. He would smile as her eyes closed over her deep sigh of surrender. His palm would move down her thigh, his arm hooking under her knee. He would lift her up the wall to her gasp and give. Here she might whisper 'please' or be speechless, say his name, whatever name of his that held value to her. Here he would taste the skin of her throat bared to him, her body open, offered and taken, his body given back to her in strokes of devotion. No pain. No violence. Nothing but the proof of his body's promise delivered to her, revelation in full potential to the music of her whimpers, his moans, and the knowledge that she would never want to leave being pinned to him, pinned by him…

In each fantasy, Yased was never a factor, because all that mattered was her giving herself to him in iterations of what he wanted.

She'd leave Garrus for him, they'd leave together. That's what she'd always wanted to do.

She'd come to him whenever he asked, do whatever he asked.

Just tell her what he wanted, and she would do that, anything…

Anything.

With those fantasies in their layered dizzying spin, their gravity and soporific well, even after the surgery, after a lost limb, they were iterations of nothing new but her added potential debt and guilt… the form of his forgiveness…

Yased was not present. This was purely selfish desire, and in his fantasies at least he would do exactly as Garrus had predicted. Use her pain. Own it. Ease it. Form an unbreakable tie emotionally pinning her to him and then physically pinning her to him, replacing that force with ardor and persuasion, an unbroken and reinforcing circuit, always live and sparking.

What was clear in Garrus's amused response to Thane's clumsy and drug-addled threats was that Garrus understood perfectly that what would really happen… what would eventually happen… once violence and lust were sated… or denied… and they would in reality be denied…

Senar would be on his knees begging her for forgiveness.

He would be the one confessing what he had always wanted, what he needed… what she would not give.

What she… could… not give.

Garrus had not been lying when he'd said the time was allowed in part to protect Senar.

Cara might be willing to give her life to a blow of violence from his hands, but the pinning and pining would lead nowhere. Garrus was right and her willingness to die did not correlate to her willingness to betray her bond mate or grant Senar any of his real wishes, which revolved around not her death but her surrender.

"She would… never… beg you." Those words had not been spoken in the tones of intended provoked anger or spite, only knowing and even gentle warning. Understanding. Pity. Knowing because Cara had never begged Garrus for a thing and never would. Wisdom from a man who had been given the rights to her true nature and had fallen to his knees for her years ago, never to rise. Not ashamed of that in the least. Proud. Right. Owner of her trembling lip and whimpers.

Garrus had gallingly carried her scent with him into the room, offensive as a haunting human ghost he could not reach through the veil, this Turian the only Medium she would speak through. She would carry his scent when she came here after gaining his permission to do so, not having begged him, but having allowed him to protect her… having surrendered to his will.

Damn the man.

Damn being sedated, helpless and hating every moment, and being seen and forgiven for being in that state.

Thane Krios had once been a frightening, unpredictable man. It appeared Senar Tuelon would face different challenges, outwitted and predicted, rendered helpless and not feared enough to make the state worth his time. The Turian knew what chain was around his neck and exactly how far his lunge would take him. Short. Always short.

He was not grateful for not having the opportunity to do something honest enough to earn the experience of begging Cara's forgiveness.

Fury about Yased's leg was in fact reserved for the Gods and not Cara, Gods he did not truly believe existed. That Yased was alive at all…

That he could be taken by Reapers…

That she could be taken by Reapers…

He needed to see her.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Having Senar threaten Garrus's… seduction… made Cara smile all the way to the hospital.

She couldn't say why it made her feel better, it was bizarre and…

And she knew it was going to be okay somehow.

She stopped in to say hello to Yased, but he was sleeping.

Senar was awake, his eyes meeting hers as soon as she opened the door. She closed it quietly, meeting his eyes and not breaking that contact. She had last seen him with closed eyes, mechanically ventilated, wondering if he would speak to her again. He didn't speak and neither did she, but his expression was one of welcome, worry, regret. He held out his hand and she ran to him. She reached out her hand to grasp his and he leaned forward, pulled her closer, arm around her waist and the other pulling her up onto the bed with him. She tried to get her knees and elbows under her, keep her weight off him, saying "Your incisions!"

He ignored her and hoisted her higher, one of his arms a constricting band around her back and his hand in her hair, his lips in her hair. He was humming, the Drell sound of consoling, of comfort, this moment dedicated to that and nothing else allowed.

She needed him, needed this, needed the sound, settled without collapsing against him where he arranged her and didn't say anything further, afraid if she said something about protecting his chest against injury he'd respond by saying she was of course welcome to anything there, she need only reach inside…

She focused on his heartbeat and his hum, both strong and real. She strained to try to hear a difference in his lungs, but she hadn't been held to him at times when she was focused on his infirmity, only hers, and she was grateful to imagine clear lungs, Yased's bravery reflected in two lives lived well and long.

He hummed, stroked her back, stroked her hair, she held still and indulged in the miracle of easy breath.

It was a long time before he said quietly "Please forgive me, Lasam."

She was curious enough to not give blanket forgiveness, for whatever in the past or whatever in the future, unnamed, so she teased "Well, if you want Garrus… it's really up to him."

He sounded like he was smiling, rueful "I claim obvious infirmity. I am still under the effects of drugs… and fury… and foolishness… and cannot be held responsible for my actions or words."

"So there's nothing to forgive. Garrus is an attractive man."

"I am under orders to not be provoked."

"So don't be."

"You make it difficult, Lasam."

"Then maybe I should ask to be forgiven."

"Perhaps we begin again. I claim a new life. My behavior easily explained as each new child brought into the world, if healthy, does so with screams and raging."

"Did you scream?"

"Metaphorically."

"Fitting a metaphoric rebirth."

"As I begin a new life, I of course must find my purpose, which is you. I know you, I see you, I seek your forgiveness. You have not died, therefore you are not free for new purpose, but you can grant me mine. I had to see you, Lasam. I expected you at my side when I woke. Though my lungs are changed, my heart remains the same, and my temper formidable as predicted."

"I'm truly sorry I wasn't there, I wanted to be."

"I would not have hurt you."

"You say that now…"

"Lasam… I would not have hurt you. I know what I might have done. It would not have been pain."

"What might you have done?"

"That I must save until you have passed from this life or are free to open that door."

"So you're saying if I wake you up in the future… I'm asking for it?"

"I am asking… Lasam… for faith that although I must misdirect Yased, though I apparently must react with childish spite to your bond mate for all he represents as an obstacle, you are safe with me."

"But I provoke you easily."

"By breathing, yes. Although I am not proud of my behavior at my metaphoric rebirth, had you been there, I am certain I would not have harmed you. I would not have allowed you to provoke me into harming you. Never. My behavior was poor because you were not there, because I feared what kept you from my side, when you belong there. The fear that perhaps gatekeepers, well meaning or not would convince you to not see me again. Garrus asked me to walk away from you. That I cannot do and he should not ask. That in itself was… provoking. Even without rebirth, Lasam, you belong with me as you are now. I need you. That is truth. You have seen me at extremities of anger, at extremities of temptation, of temper, as only you can bring me to them… and not once have I struck at you to harm you. I asked you to forgive before my surrender. I asked you to meet your bond mate's family, your family, if promises are to believed… my family. You appeared lovely and regal and you made me proud, but you were in pain because of what you feared from me."

"They are your family, our family. Garrus takes this seriously, you know, promises of family. He means it. He was trying to protect you too."

"And so he did. And he was not provoked. I take family seriously as well. You are my family. Whatever time, whatever face, whatever burden, count upon that. That bond remains always. I asked for Manipar, Lasam, but my prayer to be in your life, whatever life, does not revolve around sex. You mean more to me than that. The words are so: There is a soul and when you sense them, follow them, lead them, cherish them, love them, for the choices you will make together will be greater than the choices you could make separately. Through them you will be Whole."

She started to cry, continued to cry, his hands and hum soothing again, in her hair, on her back, warmth and vibration sinking into her spine and the echo of the conversation she'd had with Garrus, that Senar was asking to be near her, with her so he could be his best self, his most real, to have faith that when he was with her, he would be.

Before her sobs were anywhere near winding down, the door opened, Yased sat in his chair looking at them with shock and then he closed the door.

Cara burst into nervous giggles and then Senar laughed. Senar raised his voice just loud enough to be heard on the other side of the door "Yased, come in please."

The door opened again and Cara giggled harder, stress and grief and worry making Yased's face of horror and curiosity one of the funniest things she'd seen. She reached out a hand toward him and then Senar reached out his own. Senar was the only one with a voice steady enough to say "Please, come in. Join us."

Yased narrowed his eyes and said "Do I have to tell Councilor Vakarian… AGAIN… that you're in love with her? I knew it. I KNEW it."

Senar responded "Perhaps Garrus has heard enough about who potentially holds his or his bond mate's affections. Come in please."

That made Cara snort. She should probably be guiltily trying to scramble off Senar's chest, but his arm had moved to restrain her around her waist and she was too weak to consider it, mostly giggling until there were hiccups.

Yased narrowed his eyes at the hiccups, now more alarmed, this time medically. "What's that, is she okay?"

She said "No."

Senar replied "She is overset."

Yased said "So she what… fell on you?"

She retorted "I was pushed! I mean… pulled."

Senar said "I am confined to bed and could not offer her a chair."

She said "It's your father's birthday."

Yased asked "What's a birthday?"

She muttered "Seemed self explanatory. Translators are weird."

Senar said "Drell do not celebrate those dates."

She said "Drell are stupid sometimes."

When Yased was close enough she gripped his hand and squeezed, Senar took his other hand and Yased said "Well, this is weird."

Cara said "Here's a word. Platonic. Clothes on. Physical comfort of being close to each other. I can hear his heartbeat. I can NOT hear wheezing lungs. That's because of you. It's evidence of continued survival. Plus he insisted."

Yased said irritably "That's nice. Evidence should be enough by now. Are you getting up?"

Senar's arm tightened again around her and he said "She is not. I still cannot offer her a chair."

Yased looked around at the chairs pushed up against the walls, at least three and said "I can."

Senar squeezed his hand "No, you cannot. You are now occupied."

Yased said with narrowed eyes "I'm going to have nightmares and it's you guys' fault."

Cara said "Please, Yased… don't worry about Garrus. Don't worry about your mom. You're not guilty, you're not witnessing anything furtive. Just vaguely stupid and helpless. That's me, anyway, vaguely stupid and helpless."

Senar said lightly, kissing the top of her head "You are not stupid, Lasam."

She giggled again.

Yased did not look the slightest bit reassured and it was still funny.

Senar would not let go of his son's hand and he would not let Cara up, so they discussed medical progress and prognosis, excellent for both of them, the fact that Russ was going to be part of Yased's rehab. Despite Senar's wish to be there to be Yased's legs, Senar was under lifting restrictions himself for a span of time.

And he likely should not have a woman on his chest but she had already decided not to say anything about that.

They stayed like that until Garrus ended up at the still open door, tilted his head and said "Good, everyone's alive."

Yased turned his head and said "They told me I wasn't allowed to look guilty. I think I look guilty."

Garrus shrugged "Don't be. She's been crying though."

Cara held out the hand that Yased had dropped with the attendant guilt and Garrus walked over and took it. She assured him "Good crying."

Garrus bent and kissed her cheek, saying "As long as it was good."

Senar said solemnly "I wished to reassure her that she was forgiven, asked to be forgiven. I ask for the same from you both, for whatever trespasses, imaginary or real. I promise to all three of you, I will do her no harm. I have not. I will not. Regardless of her will on the subject at any point in the past or the future."

Yased said a quiet "Okay."

Garrus said "Of course. If I overstepped bounds and created a problem, I apologize as well."

Senar inclined his head "It appears we all wish to protect those we love."

Garrus said "That we do."

Yased opened his mouth to speak, but a nurse then entered the room, took in the sight and then glared "This is DEFINITELY not allowed."

Yased said "Told you."

Garrus lifted Cara off Senar's chest and said "Our apologies. We're stupid sometimes."

The nurse shooed them all out, Cara still giggling, her arms around Garrus's neck, hiccups and tears, gratitude and silliness.

Yased levitated out in his mobility chair saying "I'm going to need therapy."

Garrus said airily "Lots scheduled."

"DIFFERENT therapy."

"We can get you that too."

Garrus carried her to Yased's room, got him settled, a nurse there waiting for him as well. As Garrus carried her out he said "You were supposed to wait to unsettle me until you got home."

"If you'd waited until I got home, I would have."

"I got impatient."

"So extra unsettling."

"You guys are okay then?"

"Yes. Weird and okay."

"That's good then. There's an official dinner to welcome you to the Madlis, last minute. I'm to escort you there on time."

"And I didn't ask him what I should wear."

"I can help with that."

"I love you, so much."

"I love you too, virce. I'm carrying you out of here."

"I'm not going to argue."

"Thank the Spirits. Think I can talk you into dancing?"

"Think I can resist the way you talk me into things?"

"That's what I like to hear."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Senar watched the vid feeds of Cara's public appearances in Cipritine, doing his best to do as he'd asked, as he'd been asked, as duty demanded. He was still coiled in the sand but it was true that Cara warmed him, made his hibernation one of purpose and hope.

She was fey and so small among the towering Turians, her bond mate never leaving her side, making her smile and laugh, whispering in her ear, teaching her dancing steps that were impossible for a human of her stature to match a Turian stride, so he picked her up at the waist and danced for her, with her, cameras drawn to them.

Not a word spoken against the couple.

No contracts against either of them, all withdrawn.

All was well.

That is all that need concern her, concern them, his new family.

He would keep it well at all costs.

Whatever lay coiled and cold would not strike, would not find expression, would not wake from hibernation, would not multiply in the dark.

Rebirth would mark forgiveness, family, the impossible math of accountability turned to expressions of the ineffable.

If the cold struck deeper at the warmth of her smile and the assurance of Garrus's talons around her waist, the knowledge that they shared a life and that light between them, only them, he would remember her with her head rested on his chest trying not to do any harm to him or his healing incision, Drell skin allowing for no scar.

There would be no scar.

He would watch. He would wait. He would remain bound to her will.

Until he was not.


	55. Chapter 55

Cara was there for much of Yased's therapy. He healed quickly. She was grateful in spurts every day about being at Palaven's best hospital. She and Senar were Yased's solemn shadows, one or both present at all times during scheduled conferences or planning, Garrus and Russ also visiting. Russ took on Yased's therapeutic coaching and physical support once he was fitted for his new prosthetic. Senar still should not bear weight, though that restriction would be lifted soon. He'd healed rapidly as well, no complications.

Cara had expected him to evade or avoid his own medical course but he followed every single prohibition with grace, as though it had been his idea.

'As though' had new meaning and new depth, and she saw Spectre Tuelon as she had seen Benis Kerrat. She had respect for his ability to seem. He had been willing before to allow her to glimpse the weight of his burdens or the result of the stress of her regard…

Now he was solicitous distance.

Garrus visited but was busy with political fallout – which he termed more often as 'harvest' in order to reassure her. He was successfully reassuring. No overt evidence of political difficulty. Whatever objection there might have been to her, it didn't reach her ears, she didn't see it on Turian faces or hear it in Turian voices, most often hearing only the effusive thanks of reunited Turian families from the Collectors.

Garrus's father, Tensir, came closest to tripping her Turian alarms. He was as suspicious of her as she was of the situation, but Garrus assured her that he was a deeply suspicious and disapproving person by nature and it wasn't just her. It was everyone, including Garrus.

She still didn't trust Turian approval to be a universal or potentially sustained sentiment, imagining that the historical Turian attitudes toward humans would reassert themselves. She felt that in her bones, the same way she'd felt that she should hide what she remembered of Mindoir. Traditions were not that easily changed.

They were easily faked.

She should know.

She was as suspicious of Turian smooth deference as she was Senar's cool ease.

She didn't consider that cynical so much as prudent. She should expect a flanking attack at any moment. Her social appearances were spent on high alert. She did not get comfortable, did not want to get comfortable, did not relax. She accepted an honorific position, but reflected back on the conversation with Russ about being the Commander. "We can't afford an asterisk."

In this case, she was asterisk embodied, even though Cara believed in Garrus's mother's case the welcome was absolutely genuine, loving and reflected in Garrus's certainty that his Avah's blessing carried with it blanket acceptance.

Cara was well aware that she was shielded by the grace of Vilarene Vakarian's adamant insistence, Garrus's position as Councilor and Shepard's recent victory. That was an awful lot of power wielded in umbrella protection, and Cara was acutely aware that outside that umbrella, she'd be shredded. Garrus would be shredded.

After meeting Vilarene, Cara had a great deal of respect for the woman's grace and strength. Garrus had kept his word, bonding ceremony not public, no official dancing, and a quiet dinner in Vilarene's presence, her blessing reaffirmed, and it was done.

She and Garrus would be shredded without her, but Cara might put Vilarene up against a Reaper and see what happened.

Garrus was not wrong about the woman's imperious certainty.

All social expectations were managed by Vilarene stating publically that Lal Vakarian had much pressing upon her time and ceremony expected at a time of peace could not be afforded at time of such high alert and risk. Vilarene had said "To have all those who wished them well gather for a celebration in one room would be too great a temptation for those who oppose us. I do not wish to create a further target of my son and his bond mate. They have given enough of themselves, I am so proud of them and their continued service. With personal regret but the resolve of the Spirit of the Madlis that knows of war, I must defer public ceremony until such time as it no longer offers an opportunity to take the greatest hopes we have from us."

The excuse of that was obvious to those paying attention, at least to Cara's mind.

Yes, the bonding ceremony would have involved likely Alliance officials, Citadel officials, human, Asari, Turian…

But Russ's induction into the Vakarian clan was nearly as much of a draw, they were still all in the same room and still targets…

Cara had to concede that it was a more intimate affair, Vakarian clan nearly exclusively except for members of the Normandy and Ferox crew, finally meeting and mingling to celebrate.

It nearly felt like a bonding ceremony, Russ taking Vakarian paint fraught with the odd intimacy of life and death and love, layered sacrifice, lies and truths, same as experienced in Yased's recuperation.

Russ was tied closer to Garrus.

Garrus was tied closer to Senar.

Senar was tied closer to Cara.

Cara was tied closer to Russ.

Family. Odd, potentially incestuous family.

Yased soaked it in, as happy as Cara had seen him. She'd even heard him challenge Russ and Senar to footraces that he would be able to win through exhausting their organic stamina and winning by hopping if necessary on his new high tech leg that was admittedly… very cool.

Cara wanted two of her own after some research. Although it was completely possible that Yased was faking some of his bravery, Cara was assured by the medical team that he was in no physical pain from the loss of limb and emotionally vindicated, having earned his father's continued breath.

Yased was tied closer to everyone, his father most securely.

Yased had gained a Madlis and two ships' worth of new family that adopted him with ease.

Russ would give his life, his everything, for Garrus.

Cara would give… take… Yased's life and livelihood for Senar…

She still wasn't sure about her answer there. She didn't know how to be sure, imagining both men with blades to their throat, some faceless and authoritative entity asking her to choose who would live and who would die…

And the look in Senar's eyes demanding that she choose him…

Always that look demanding that she choose him for any sacrifice or any privilege…

That was the distracting and most important part of that thought experiment. It ended there because the reality was in that scenario that if she chose Yased to die, Senar would kill her and that's the lesson he wanted her to learn. Regardless of whether or not he could actually do it, he wanted her to believe he would.

The uncomfortable truth likely known to both is that she'd choose Senar to live and he would be unable to kill her and the reasons for both of those things being true were best left to thought experiments and not reality.

Part of her wanted to step aside and give Garrus to Russ. Russ deserved to be happy.

Then again the greater part of her thought she'd take Russ down with a butter knife if it came to that. She was wily and in love and no way.

She was feeling guilty about all her riches and her… inability to appreciate many of those things… or people… that seemingly belonged to her.

She didn't want to feel guilty, but she was feeling guilty and she had to be honest with Garrus about why she was feeling guilty and she didn't want to do that.

She was witness to Turian lives lived more fully, the Madlis hearing more words from different sources, and she was proud.

She was witness to Yased getting stronger daily, Senar biding time, formal and attentive to his son, courteous and kind to Cara, rarely addressing her as she rarely addressed him, agreeing on the focus being Yased.

She was witness to Russ's paint, applied by Garrus. Normally a resident Clan painter would apply it, but Russ had commented Garrus had done a good job with the red… and Garrus had volunteered.

During the ceremony, Russ beaming and just about glowing without biotics, Cara was so happy for him, crooking a finger toward him until he leaned over. She kissed at the bladed edge of his mandible, until it just bent a little with the tightening of his jaw.

Family.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Back in their quarters she had broken into pacing, Garrus making himself comfortable and saying "What's on your mind?"

She raised her hands and said "Everything. I think. Gotta get some of it out."

"This is me not being surprised."

She had learned not to pace AROUND the couch, Garrus disliked the neck strain. He wasn't a fan of pacing at all and it made him nervous, but she had argued that she was MORE nervous than he was if she couldn't pace, so she paced out an oval in front of the couch instead of around it.

She stopped for a moment, then moved over to where he was, kissed him until the flow of Reverie started, warm and sure. She pulled back and said "That's not what's usually referred to when humans say 'liquid courage' but it works. You work. Thank you."

"Happy to enable you."

"Happy to be enabled. First… yeah, I'm a bit manic, but to clarify, this isn't about alienation. It's… a good thing. With side effects. The more I am able to be myself… with you… the more I want to insist upon being myself with other people and I can't. I like me. I love me. You love me. All great things. I don't want to change. I've always been good at knowing what is expected of me, good at reading that, even good at fulfilling that expectation. When that has a real purpose, it's worth doing. But when I'm done with being Shepard, I want to be done with fulfilling that expectation and I want to insist on being me."

She stopped and paused, worked her way around the edges of a concept, tried to figure out how to slice it into bite-sized pieces for a Turian brain.

"To describe the way my brain works, maybe it's easier that we're different species. It might be hard to explain to another human. Experiencing myself as Shepard… even as Lal Vakarian… I'm put in a space where there are distinct standards of behavior, standards of being. They're Turian, I can't hope to fulfill them or even reach the minimal height requirement, but my track record speaks for me. I can create a new standard. That… would be destroyed if I were myself, if I were honest, if I were to align with my own truth."

"For Turians, even for humans, I'm supposed to progress from who I am… who I chose to be deliberately… and see things more their way. Be tougher. Be stronger. Be hardened. That's the supposed natural progression but…I don't like it. I don't want it. I'm actively averse to it, and I have to… resist isn't the word. I have no trouble resisting becoming like everyone else. The Turian ideal being what it is, I'm antithetical. It's the same with humans, really. I'd be considered naïve, weak. I'm not those things. Not in the middle of a crisis. What I am is willing to experience my own weaknesses and strengths with honesty, maintain my personal sensitivity, keep those things because I need them in order to stay connected to my compassion and my desire to understand. What adults seem to do out of self defense is harden and toughen themselves and look out for only themselves most of the time. They choose to not understand but to judge and rely on distance and 'objectivity' when most often it's ignorance and stereotypical self protection. I can't do that, I'd lose who I am. I'd lose touch with what I value."

"About me not having to resist influence… yeah, that's not the word. What I have to do is tolerate… the assumption that being self involved and exclusively self directed is the best of all possible worlds. I don't agree. I will never agree. So it's not about me having to resist being pulled along, it is about me declining the invitation to be like others while assuming that what's being offered to me is what I would or should want given a choice."

She bounced on her feet for a few moments, thought around the curves and concepts and said

"So here's the analogy. If you were raised by humans who fed you a steady diet of cookies, where your brain and tongue interpreted that offering as inherently bitter… but the only thing available… maybe a few things might have happened. Your mind might have resolved that cognitive dissonance as thinking bitter was the right way to do things, the people caring for you insisted upon it, they all enjoyed it, therefore… it was right. Had to be right. You'd maybe ignore your tongue and your mind, intellectually convince yourself that sustenance was unpleasant but necessary. Maybe it provided only minimal sustenance to you, maybe made you sick and although it strengthened those around you, you didn't have the same results. You might have gotten weaker, felt a different hunger nobody else seemed to feel. You might have rejected the bitter entirely, snuck out in the middle of the night and run down a deer under the moon, rejoiced in what your tongue and mind told you was the right thing for you. You might have washed off the blood and re-joined the ranks of the cookie-eating humans in the morning. You'd be separate, but you'd know more about your nature. You'd know more about yourself, more about the group you're supposed to be a part of, and that distinction could generate guilt or self-hatred or self righteousness or any number of things. The mind, the body, even the tongue can change in a lot of ways…"

She lost the chain of thought, the analogy playing out and then she said "But here's the thing. I was raised on Mindoir with everything perfect, everything delicious, everything supportive and loving… and that's what I know. I had formative years of that. My tastes were set. I know what bitterness is, what it means, what it does. I don't partake. If I'm forced to by circumstance and necessity, say the fact that people are gonna die if I don't gain their support or confidence, I know the difference between Cara Fanning, Lal Shepard and Lal Vakarian. I know the difference between Garrus Vakarian and Garrus Fanning. My ideal world of no inherent bitterness is Cara and Garrus Fanning."

"I'll be Lal… any Lal… but I know the difference. I'm never going to be a Turian ideal, I'm always going to have to lie. And here's where it gets not so simple. I asked you… and you said we could go somewhere together, be The Fannings… somewhere with trees. I'd be taking this from you. This. The place, the things that are perfect on your tongue, perfect for your mind, where you are your best self, where you are among those you love, those you were raised to care for, to protect, a planet looking to you… and I'd be asking you to live for one small human, to live on cookies. To… pretend that's the way you want it. I'd be taking you from this Madlis and… I want to lie to you. I want to lie to you badly. I want to act every day like this is my converted favorite place, that everything's perfect… that I should want and do want…"

Garrus's smile was a little sad but knowing "I know everything isn't perfect." She looked at him in confusion and he said "You smell like metal." Her brows drew together, the explanation a complete lack of explanation. His smile veered more to knowing "You're really good. You've gotten better at lying. I can't tell by looking at you anymore. You are on stage here. You're committed. But Cara, there's tongue logic and then there's nose logic. Shepard always smells like metal in a fight. Every time you go out… we go out… here… every smile you conjure and gracious silence you grant while you want to run away or ask a million questions… you smell like metal. I know when you're in a fight."

She said in a rushed babble "That's… I'm… I can barely read your facial expressions and you…"

"I… have more of an advantage."

"I can't take you away from this."

"Once again, Cara, you're using the wrong pronouns. We… will take ourselves away from this. If we survive."

"You're the best Councilor the Turian people have had. You'd be the best Primarch the Turian people could have."

Garrus laughed "Oh, well, a Turian's bond mate should be ambitious, but I had no idea that's where you thought I was headed."

"That's where you would be headed without me."

"There is no… without you. There's we."

"Then… what do… we… do?"

"We go where there are cake trees."

"They don't exist."

"So we keep looking. Cara, there's a way for you to be you and me to be me and us to be us. We will find it. You know, again, if we survive. You're strategically farther ahead than I am, granted, but one war at a time."

"I don't want to be at war with you."

"You won't be. We won't be at war with each other, we'll just have the luxury of dropping… nonconsensual cookie appreciation to save the galaxy. Stakes should be lower day to day. We'll manage."

She burst into watery giggles. She said, reflecting her exhaustion "I'm tired of not being me. I'm tired of having it assumed by everyone else that the real me isn't enough."

"Then stop assuming that for me, the real you isn't enough. Start there."

"I want to go back to the Normandy. I want to talk to Sooth. I want to plan next steps. I'm okay not being me if there's a purpose, but my purpose here is done. No more dinners or dances. I love dinner with you, I'm even starting to appreciate dancing… but it is wearing me down like I have to go out and run down a deer every night under the moon and I want a cookie. I need to do my job. I need to go be me so I can plan for the days of being us together. I still have no idea how to do that, Reapers seem easier."

"Okay. It would be… difficult to get security clearance for a Geth to visit the Madlis. I'd love to give my father a hernia asking, but…"

"He doesn't like me."

"He doesn't like anyone."

"He loves your mother."

"Yeah, but he doesn't like her sometimes."

Cara giggled "I love you."

"I love you too, virce. I'll let people know you've been called away on business. I'll do the me thing here. You do the you thing there. I'll be there for us by shuttle. One more thing."

"What?"

"What's a deer?"

"Kinda like an alpaca."

"Do they taste that good?"

"I have no idea. You're asking the wrong person."

"So we find a place with cookies, cake trees, alpaca and deer."

"We might have to import some of that."

"Look, you can bake the cookies and the cake. Trees aren't that hard. Alpaca and deer can be bought. Considering we have to end a war that has waged itself every 50,000 years first… it seems doable. We're creative people."

"We're gonna have to be."

"Let's head to the Normandy."

"Tomorrow. I should say goodbye to Yased at least. Let him know I won't be there every day."

"Tomorrow then. We'll stay in tonight."

"Oh, I feel the need to swear in relief. Do I smell like metal now?"

He grinned, then had her in his arms, off the floor mid pace, his tongue at her throat and voice in her ear "No… I think you probably smell more like I think a deer tastes."

"I get to keep my blood though?"

Garrus's teeth dragged along her neck as he said "Most of it."

"Liquid courage?"

"Liquid something."

"Headed toward liquid everything."

"Remember when I said we were walking with hands held on the Citadel?"

"Mm hm."

"We're walking through trees under the moon somewhere, holding hands, wherever we end up. We can't do that here. You need trees, now I need a moon. Deal?"

"Best deal."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

She had been in the habit of seeing Yased daily for at least a few hours. There were times when visitors weren't allowed, times when she always made sure Senar and Yased would have time alone.

Yased's room was full of 'get well soon' gifts from different cultures and traditions – Drell glow stone and sand sculpture, the tradition of human flowers, Turian luck spires – graceful sculpted curved spirals made from all sorts of materials, paper, glass and metal.

Senar was there, as was his schedule, and she could inform them both. She'd spent no time with Senar since she'd been scolded by a nurse and lifted off him by Garrus, neither attempting to puncture the peace of Yased's recovery by creating another spectacle. Senar had convinced Yased that he was not in love with her and that was the truth he would honor in his son's presence and she supported that. Maybe it was even true now. They would all bring their stones or their spires or their flowers and the attention belonged to the young man without a limb.

She leaned in and greeted Yased with the family clasp, smiling and saying "How's therapy going?"

Yased said "Well enough that people are going to have to stop asking that soon."

"I'm glad to hear it. I'm going to be headed back to the Normandy, back to next steps in the mission."

Yased blinked and hesitated and said "Okay."

She said "I'll still be back to visit, just not every day."

"You don't have to."

"No, I don't have to, I want to. I'll miss you."

"I'll miss you too."

Then there was a meal delivered, more gifts delivered to appreciative smiles from Yased and new visitors, two younger Turians and an Asari that Cara had not met… or didn't remember meeting… and she was introduced. Awe at Commander Shepard ensued until Senar's hand on her shoulder brought him to her attention. He indicated that they'd leave the room to leave Yased to his friends, Yased acknowledging it and turning to animated conversation.

Beyond the hand on her shoulder he did not touch her. He began to walk through the hospital. There was a gardened courtyard but neither of them should venture there without suits. He chose instead an observation deck.

Silence spread out between them in contemplation, his hands behind his back, clasped, looking down at the riot of seasonal Turian growth. "I have two requests to make of you, Lasam."

She was relieved to hear the word 'Lasam' in a reassuring way, almost afraid he'd begin to call her Shepard and that…

She wouldn't like that.

He said softly "One is that whatever mission draws you from Palaven, I will go with you. I will be on your squad."

She hesitated until he turned and looked at her, and there it was… the demand in his eyes that he be granted the privilege or sacrifice…

Or both.

His head tilted to a curious and near challenged expression, his voice light and amused "Must I convince you?"

She said to stall "You're a Spectre in your own right."

"Irrelevant."

"Highly relevant."

"Yased is aware my mission lies with you."

"You should stay with him."

"What I should do, Cara, is for me to choose and for you to grant. I will go with you. I will be in your squad. Every squad."

"And will you be ordering me then as you are ordering me now?"

He didn't answer the question, instead saying "I am convincing you, Lasam, not ordering you."

"Will you be… convincing…?"

"Always."

Her lower jaw jutted out in affronted… and relatively stymied rebellion. He noted her expression and said "Charming as a 'no' might be, you will say yes and you know it. You simply do not like it."

"No, I don't like it."

"If you believed I would retire with my son, you were mistaken and should consider that no longer."

"Not consider that you stay with him? Not consider that you do as your Spirit wishes? You could use your Spectre authority to end the Compact. Not cause…"

"Not cause what, Cara?"

She thought very carefully and said "Dilution of my authority."

He smiled and it was deliberate "Lasam, I did not ask for Spectre authority. I did not ask for new lungs. I did not ask for continued life. What I am asking for does not require an argument or inconsequential fears on your part. Whatever I may have… diluted… was worthy of dilution. What I have concentrated was worthy of concentration. That you wish to owe me nothing would be preferred on your part, but it is not, nor will it ever be the case. I ask you again, Lasam. With my authority, with my lungs, with my life, I wish to spend them as I choose, and I choose to be on your squad. Each squad. You will not leave me on Palaven, you will not leave me on the Normandy. When you leave your ship on a mission, you will take me with you. When you consider your missions on your ship, you will include me in planning, as we have done in the past. If you wish, consider me a bodyguard. I volunteer my services. I have done as you wished, as you asked. After the mission I spent time with my son. I offered my obedience. Now I require your obedience in this and in one other thing, and you will give it."

"What's the other thing?"

"Yased wishes to go with you. He has thoughts of transferring to the Normandy and apprenticing under Dr. Chakwas. You will not allow it. You will not tell him that I convinced you of such. He will remain on Palaven, safe, with his new family. These things are best, Lasam. Perhaps not best for you in granting them, but you owe them to me. There will be no conditions or time limit to this bargain."

"You want me to 'reward' you by placing you in constant danger. You want me to place you at further risk at losing your life at my command. I want you safe, Senar. I want you as safe as you want Yased, and I've asked too much of you. Don't make me ask for more."

"Cara, such an appeal is tiresome and you know better, or you should. Tell yourself what you wish. I wish to preserve my son's life and that is achieved by opposing Reapers, and opposing Reapers is done at your side. I wish to grant my life meaning, to earn the right to stand by Irikah's side at the shores. I wish to watch over my Manipar as she faces her death. I wish to convince you, Cara, and I will. If you fear my reasons, any of my reasons or stated goals, any of my truths or lies… you are a brave woman with a strong heart and you have nothing to fear from me."

"No, I fear FOR you."

"Then we are in accord. I fear for you."

"I have everything, Senar. I have a bond mate. I have a ship. I have a mission. I have nothing to offer you but danger. I'll end up taking away more from you. I've taken your promise to your wife, I've taken your faith that I will honor your wishes."

"You did not take those things, Cara. I gave them. Freely. Now you will give what pains you."

"Please don't ask for this."

"I will follow you, Cara, if you do not grant me the right I have earned."

She approached near anger and said "The Normandy has a stealth drive."

He said calmly "I would enjoy that challenge. I would enjoy more being able to sleep in my own cabin, if no longer in yours."

"You want me to be the one to tell Yased I'm taking you from him and leaving him behind."

"Yes, and you will."

She felt like metal was scraping over her spine as she said in near desperation "I can't be with you."

The cold and challenge melted from his expression, he stepped closer to her and tipped her chin up with a finger as he said "Cara, this is not your choice, it is mine. You will grant it. It is done. Your fate is set in many ways, Lasam. I will be there to witness those ways."

"You will be there to… convince me of those ways and I will remain unconvinced."

"Then that is my fate and the one I choose. You cannot change that. I will not allow it. Tell me yes, Cara, and it will stand. I need do no more convincing."

She had no idea what he was threatening, and it didn't matter. Venom? Being tracked? Being a stowaway? She gathered her courage… or was it cowardice? She couldn't tell. She had the word 'No' solidly in her lungs and ready to be spoken, with her heels ready to turn, ready to…

The unspoken breath left her lungs. No, she was not ready to accuse him of anything, deny him his masochistic and bloody-minded request. There was no logic to it. He might even be pushing her to it, trying to get her to admit she was scared… and then he could leverage that crack.

He was family. She owed him. She closed her eyes and flushed deep red at the idea of having to tell Yased that his father was going with her, and they were leaving him behind, when she knew that would feel like… be… abandonment… again. That it would be her fault. Again.

She'd have to tell Garrus that in every squad would be a Drell waiting for the opportunity for him to die.

Family.

Duty.

Drell… bloody minded…

She almost approached being angry again but the wave of that emotion collapsed into despair. She said simply "I don't want to see you die. I want you to be one of the people that live… happily ever after?"

"My ever after, whatever it is, Lasam, lies with you. If you must watch me die you must, I cannot change that. Attempt to give me orders that make sense."

"Like I can promise that."

"Say it, Cara. Say yes."

"Yes."

"My thanks, Lasam. Spare yourself guilt, it is my choice."

"You're crazy."

"Then it is my madness."

"Great. That's encouraging. Senar, I'm so sorry…"

"Do not apologize, Lasam. I am not sorry, nor will I apologize."

"Would you accept my apology?"

"No."

"What will you accept?"

"The word yes, from your lips, as you have given it."

Her shoulders slumped and she closed her eyes to the swirling complicated navigation she faced.

Senar said calmly "I will await your orders, Lasam. I must return to Yased."

She slid to the floor as he turned the corner. He did not look back or return. No apology given or accepted. She'd considered getting on her knees and begging. She'd imagined he'd have said that although it was a charming picture, he was unmoved.

He would be unmoved.


	56. Chapter 56

Cara blinked, on the floor until she realized she was on the floor, still nerveless and without balance, but not without wit. On the floor would not work.

This wasn't exactly battle but it was challenge, and one she had to work through, one she had to understand, one she needed to navigate.

Something… some… things in the back of her mind, the side of her mind, the middle… just not the front, were stirring and she needed to know the shape they were attempting to describe.

Find a solid inch of something and go from there.

She stood and began to pace, which merely looked like walking. The hospital was a perfect place to wander hallways without being interrupted. She had business here, she had a right to be here, she would not be stopped as long as Shepard's face resembled Shepard's face.

She needed to know how to talk to herself about this. She needed to know how to talk to Garrus about this. She needed to know how to talk to Yased about this.

None of those would be the same thing. Probably.

They'd all still have to be true – as true as what Senar had said were the choices of his truths or lies – that he wished for Yased to be safe. That he wished to be worthy of Irikah's regard. That she was his Manipar. Closely examined… they could… all be true. They were true in their progression in time, they were true in isolation. They could not share the same space in some ways, but they could all be true.

Did she believe he wished Yased to be safe? Without doubt.

Did she believe he wished to be worthy of Irikah's approval, and if he found himself at the shores, at her side, that he would stay with her, that it would seem to him what he had always wanted? Without doubt.

Did she believe that if he found himself stumbling through sands, no memory, no remembrance of Cara or Senar, that he'd embody Senar and be attracted to someone who embodied Cara? Without doubt.

Would she love him?

Without doubt.

All his lies or truths or wishes were situationally true and dependent on developing circumstances over which he had no control.

She needed to know why she knew not to talk to Senar about this. He'd given her all he was going to give her on the subject and the encounter had a sense of beginning, middle and end. Enough. It was…

It had been painful for him and it was enough. He'd had to keep it brief out of necessity. Not for her sake but for his.

That first intuitional shape loomed large, something she could touch, feel, potentially extend in imagination until her intellect grasped what her intuition implied and reached for as explanation. It wasn't as it seemed. He'd appeared a certain way because…

Senar was not a conventional man. Senar knew she was not a conventional woman. Had things been conventional…

And there it was. The continuing solid shape, leading to something that could be extrapolated.

Had things been conventional they would have been a lie. She would have seen an attempt at manipulation of his chaos into intended control as an obvious lie, her suspicion assured.

He'd informed her he could lie, had lied, might lie… but she would bet quite a bit that he hadn't lied just then. He had asked her directly for something, no trap, no bribe…

He hadn't lied to her.

That was an extraordinary risky thing… for him to do, for her to be thinking about trust and lack of lies, because trusting Senar Tuelon…

But that's what he wanted.

To be trusted? Even though they both knew better?

To be trusted when he appeared his most untrustworthy?

Because his honesty wasn't as smooth as his lies, and he was vulnerable when he was honest.

He still didn't know he glowed. She had the home court – or the home delusion – advantage.

What had she said to Russ? That she needed Senar's insubordination as much as she needed Garrus's loyalty?

Was that true enough to put weight upon it knowingly instead of out of desperation? To value his judgment as valid and necessary? To make that her solid inch of truth that she would extrapolate from? 'Trust Senar Tuelon?'

That's what he wanted her to do. Trust him. Possibly inspire others to trust him despite all evidence to the contrary, not because she had to or he had leverage but because… she wanted to.

Trust him not about his process, but about his results.

But the result he wanted…

Trust that regardless of what he wanted… his process would provide value that could not be provided from another source.

It was about trust, either trust being irrelevant in the math so far or… the idea of debts and owing was the feint, it was about doing the right thing?

She remembered saying "I do not want to be at war with Senar Tuelon… ever."

She never did. She could not afford it.

He… did not want to be at war with Cara Fanning.

Was this… truce? Trading prisoners? She'd demanded he do something he did not want to do… something she considered greater good… he demanded the same of her in mirror-shine Drell precision? To show that he could? To test her sense of fairness and strategic necessity?

If he'd been charming she would not have believed the charm was real, so he did not attempt to charm.

If he'd been threatening… he had been, but not in the way he had been previously, where he offered an unsavory solution to an unsolvable problem. He had phrased it… and it had been… 'convincing' and what he'd asked – Garrus had told her she wouldn't tell him no to anything reasonable he asked – which – she liked to think she wouldn't tell anybody no to anything reasonable they asked, but Garrus definitely had a skewed experience of her being unreasonable in his opinion.

She scanned back and saw no threat, no real threat. He'd known she'd say yes. He'd told her so. That hadn't been taunting… it had been…

Permission. Reassuring knowledge of her reasonable and fair nature and permission.

And if she had said "Do not come with me and do not follow…"

Had she just missed her chance to say that?

Did she… want to say that?

The answer came immediately. Cara wanted him safe and far away. Shepard NEEDED him. Needed him enough to extend his life…

Yeah, there was a lot of Cara in there… but…

He'd told her he would convince her, made clear he could take any number of paths to that convincing… but he let the shape of her mind assess and choose… he'd emphasized fair, that he'd earned the right… that her wanting to protect him was not a factor he valued…

He had earned the right to choose his own path, give his own arm, devote his own spirit.

He'd also earned the right to walk away entirely, debts paid, no further risks, having been asked for too much and having avoided being put in that position again.

He didn't demand that she trust him, only that she give something he'd asked and earned and that she could choose her own reasons from his heretofore given lies or truths…

He didn't create a narrowing and inescapable path for her, he'd made requests… told her they would become true…

Because he wanted them or because she wanted them, or because she wanted them, he wanted them?

For Cara?

For Shepard?

For him?

Perspective flipped and skewed and was dizzying.

The trap worked both ways, pass or fail, trip or evade…

Did it really matter if he knew she'd say 'yes' and knew it when he started the conversation, had faith in her, trusted her, knew her…

And that was what this was about.

It was up to her to know the shape of the truth…

A moment in time where he presented himself as he was, relied upon her to see him… and he would accept her judgment.

A moment of vulnerability, asking for what she wanted, what she needed…

Presenting himself as a burden. Relying upon her to define him.

She took a moment and breathed, gave her racing thoughts a pausing moment before she tore down this side alley of thought. She paced her breathing to her steps, ordered and creating a template.

Take care to avoid the path of chaos, double check intentions and observations and how they align with motivations.

She was entirely capable of justifying his behavior…

He knew that too.

So did Garrus.

So did Kolyat. The boy might not be the height of strategic thought, but he knew his father. He knew what his father looked like, felt like, in love. He'd seen it before.

The man who had lost himself to battle sleep for ten years after Irikah's death, now willingly her arm, under her battle-sleep sway, bodyguard to Manipar, fulfilling any role she chose.

Reaffirming his service.

So many of Senar's threats, traps and trajectories had been successfully maneuvered by her, by Garrus… because he set them up for certain conditions to have the opportunity to assert themselves.

They were always disarmed by honesty. In order to trip a trap Senar set… she'd have to lie, hide, conceal…

If she were honest…

On the subject of her command he need only consult her.

On the subject of her inability to be with him… which he hadn't even addressed as valid, addressed only that he go with her on her missions and keep Yased safely away from conflict… that she be responsible for those two things fully…

That she be fully responsible for doing the right thing, and he would take no credit.

He was attempting lucid battle sleep?

Lucid trust in the guise of pressure because to experience no pressure from him would be to experience a lie?

She made a few more rounds of the observation deck, ignoring the plants and noting only the pattern of lines on the floor. Order. Predictable order. Her thoughts needed to fall together like tile, smooth edges, predictable pattern. This had the potential to be a predictable pattern. Not simple like tile, like smooth edges but more…

Fractal. This took fractal, repeating and resurgent shape, to build the assumption that the next shape taken, all the shapes taken… would be of the same character? The same underlying formula and impulse, the same outcome? Regardless of scope or scale, fractal. Do not be deceived. Look for the pattern.

After considering she contacted Garrus, who was thankfully at home still, not in a meeting. She smiled and he asked "How'd it go?"

"It went well. Senar's being… Senar. Roundabout and loop-de-loop. Trying to not get dizzy. I'll tell you more about it later. Everything's fine. He's going with us and Yased will be staying here."

Garrus looked and sounded near smug "Told you."

"Yes, you did, and despite what I might have wanted… which I also need to figure out because I'm trying not to get dizzy, I want to ask… when you spoke to Senar when I wasn't there… I didn't ask but now I think I need to know. I think he assumed you told me everything you said to him, but I'm missing a piece. A few pieces. I don't really know what I'm looking for, could you tell me, again, what you both said? The high points? I know you told him that he should walk away… anything else?"

"Yeah, and I still think it'd be the best thing for the guy, best thing for my peace of mind, best thing for Yased. I think having him around causes you… and me… a lot of unnecessary stress." She wanted him to answer so she wasn't going to argue or contradict, but she felt like saying that the stress was and had been absolutely required several times. Maybe Garrus thought he could take over on all protection fronts. Maybe he was right. Garrus did not want Senar to consider himself a redundant protection system… a backup. It was implied that meant Garrus eliminated, Senar would be primary.

As a Commander, however, Shepard would always take as many belts or suspenders offered. Redundancies and backups on safety and thought process were always welcome… and needed.

She waited until he continued, his face no longer smug but determined "I'm not wrong, Cara. He wants you. He's angling toward having you. This is a guy that gets what he angles toward. That thing being you, me being in the way, I don't think I was out of line asking him to create needed distance."

Distance needed for whom? She needed to think about that as well. She said "I'm not blaming you at all for asking, I want to know his reaction. Did he think I asked you to say that?"

"No, he's proud of knowing how your mind works. The implication is that he understands you better than I do. He said he doubted you'd asked me to ask him that. He figured out he had to ask to see you without me telling him."

Given a lightning moment of comparison she hadn't thought about, or not in a quick-fire logical way, she did think Senar knew how her mind worked.

Better than the set of all sentient creatures excluding Garrus or her parents easily.

Better than Garrus?

She'd never know. Garrus had the definite home-court or home-delusion advantage there, and Senar was limited to maneuvers and interventions he needed to take to create professional and personal relevance outside of erotic intent. It couldn't be denied that he'd made himself relevant, in many ways by being able to predict how she'd behave, predicting how she wanted the environment to behave.

But he exploited where Garrus compensated… and since she would not allow him to compensate… she would never know.

There was nothing to be gained by qualifying Garrus's statement. There were intricacies here she hadn't delineated and couldn't describe, she could only distract from clarity if she began anything where she backed up Senar or tried to compare Garrus's reliance on Russ for support and information in the same way she relied on Senar.

Definitely not a good move. Near flashing red danger signals mentally at approaching the idea of saying that. It might be true, but she didn't have the interest in analyzing Garrus and Russ and drawing a false equivalency, making a false comparison. She could only upset Garrus into feeling he was using Russ…

Which he was.

And Russ knew it and did it voluntarily and fought for the right, same as Senar was doing.

Russ was the secondary hoping to be primary. Perhaps not active hope, but potential hope, and she did not feel threatened, even if Russ had actively been hostile in the past where Senar had been protective…

She did not want to go there. She had to figure it out to get the working schematic of moving parts, but not right now.

Her mind spun into wider circles, tighter patterns, more like spirals. She was getting distracted by that but said "Anything else of note? I understand it was a pretty short conversation, I just want the full picture."

"The whole thing about seducing me was criticism of how I'd bonded to you without consent. He said that the rules I lived by were more ethically negotiable than the rules you lived by, that the rules of my life would mean he could take me without consent. He said you'd have to beg him to earn the right to be with him… It was…"

She said softly "It's what he wants. He wants you out of the way but he won't do it himself. That would be… cheating. I'd know. He knows I'd know, and I would. That's why he's protected you as well. And he wants me to beg because he feels he's to the point of begging. Has been there. Wants reciprocity."

"He said you'd never take. He wouldn't take you. Not like I took you."

"He was a man in pain and still drugged. It was honest. It was about what and how he'd do things if he could, what he wanted, what he didn't have. But he also told you why he didn't. Honestly. Told you what you have and what he feels you don't deserve… that he would be more deserving. Distinct. Better. But to see himself that way he has to actually BE better." That coalesced and she blurted "He can't cheat. He can't do what you did. He can't repeat the mistakes he made with Irikah. He can't be unworthy, he knows he would fail. He'd ensure he failed. He'd judge himself, he wouldn't even need me to condemn him. He can't, Garrus. It would ruin the triumph, and he wants triumph. I'm not saying what you did was wrong, I'm saying he needs to be distinct and different, more deserving. It's actually consistent with what he's said, what he's done, it's just more… honest, more bare bones. If he were a Hanar he would have told you his Soul Name. 'He Who Ascends To His Throne.'"

"Yeah. I got that impression. It wasn't a threat, it was an… illustration of how me accusing him of wanting to hurt you…"

Garrus had his own guilt, his own sense of Turian unworthiness despite her forgiveness or his seat of power at the moment. It was on his face, in his voice. Spirals began to click together and spin in symmetrical opposition. She said "It's okay, I just need to know. What you said was honest, I'm sure. I just think… in that moment he might have been honest himself… because he couldn't be any other way. Well, he could have. Always capable of lying, maybe… not motivated to lie when the truth would serve. Unique set of circumstances. He wanted to provoke you to do something unworthy. In a… 'I'm drugged and not thinking straight' way."

Garrus said "Okay. He also said you were a master of the game."

She blinked and asked "Which game?"

"I think he was implying… all of them. Games worth playing. Pon-Ifa was mentioned, but it was also in the context of the rules of my life being… not so much with the integrity. But that you would act with integrity regardless of my influence… or his."

The spirals in her mind splashed with color and shading, the mechanics of Senar's choices taking shape. "Thank you. That's it."

"What's it?"

"That's what I needed to know. Oh, wait. How is it that one of you guys didn't hit the other?"

"I didn't because you told me I can't. Yeah, the rule is 'no killing' but trying to hit the guy would definitely lead that way. Plus. Hospital bed. Even I've got standards of when violence is appropriate. He said he wouldn't be provoked. I said… he had a better shot at me than you, that you'd never beg him, and that if he repaid you by seducing his bond mate, that didn't seem to make sense when you'd given him his purpose, his life and his son. I asked him to live by your rules if he valued them so highly. Forgiveness implied. He only said 'as you wish.'"

She felt a warm rush of relief, affection for both of them as the final piece clicked satisfyingly into place, gears turning without a snag "Have I mentioned how much I love you lately?"

"It's been a few hours."

"You are a magnificent man, Garrus."

"About the loving me part?"

"Love you so much. So very much. Coming home."

She understood.

Now she just had to try to make other people understand.

That might not be accomplished by telling the truth and she was going to have to at least lie to Yased. She would have to try to find a truth to tell him. She should aspire to a certain Drell's artistry.

She closed her eyes again and paced a few more rounds before heading back.

She understood. She wasn't sure she was right, wasn't sure she should rely on her conclusion, wasn't sure she should or could explain her conclusion, and only knew that success lay in a very specific direction, and she needed success.

She didn't want to die but she was willing to do it to take out the threat of Reapers.

Garrus didn't want her to risk her life but he'd risk his right along hers if she was going to insist.

Yased did not want to be left behind again with surrogate family when he loved his real family and wanted to be there with them, for them.

Russ wanted Garrus and she had never said out loud that Russ would be about as sorry that Cara died as Senar might be that Garrus died… but Russ would follow her despite his animosity because it's what Garrus wanted and needed…

She would never draw comparisons to Russ and Garrus… and she never would.

Senar might mention it, though, if pushed, and she could hope there was no pushing.

Because Senar wanted her, and as their relationship evolved they were far past her original objections to her being with him. Senar had stripped back her objections one by one, earned her regard, her respect, her love, the right to be known as family, the right to defend and love each other…

Senar had stripped away Irikah as an obstacle. He was Manipar. He was her Manipar and he did not care who else knew it, though he wished to protect Yased physically and emotionally from seeing him so much in love with another woman.

Garrus was not the obstacle, Cara herself was the obstacle. Her rules. Her goals. Her inspiration. Her ability to discern truth, regardless of its presentation.

Senar's faith that he must ascend and not descend.

He had only one path to success as well. He must focus upon that path.

It all depended on whose paths ended, why and when.

Those were all possibilities out of their control.

He did know her, knew her well, and his perfectly tailored word gift, his demand, was as carefully considered as the dress he had asked her to wear for him… but that dress… had been for her, handling something Kasumi needed and Shepard had agreed to provide. A perfect fit to the situation required.

A perfect lesson in 'how to seem' because she needed to know how to seem.

A mirrored reversal and presentation of what she needed, what he would give her without being asked. She needed him with her. She needed him as Cara, she needed him as Shepard and he knew it and made it seem as though he forced her to take him with her.

She wanted him on the ship, on the squad - she didn't want to want that.

She wanted Yased safe, and out of range of her machinations, fully family and kept clean from violence and the strange alchemy of what the combination of Commander Lal Shepard, Councilor Garrus Vakarian, Spectre Hemorus Orbestan and Spectre Senar Tuelon might bring into being.

He'd seemingly forced her, using no force at all, implacably, to accept what she already wanted and did not want to want as though she had no choice.

So what did that mean for the future?

What was the fractal implications of this being exactly what he'd always done once he'd discovered her name was Cara Fanning?

How would she tell herself this story?

How would she tell Garrus this story?

She knew exactly why she would not need to inform Senar of anything at all.

He already knew.

She should be afraid, but mostly she felt very, very sorry for the Reapers.

She had the best of all worlds: Strength, loyalty, guile and will.

She smiled her smile. It was… her smile… and not Shepard's.

She grasped the truth but didn't think anybody else who required explanation would believe her, so of course she was going to have to lie or find situational truths. No hiding. No running away.

For now… she might put personal weight on her fractal imaginings, but she wasn't going to start construction on the site or ask anybody else to do the same. She was still desperate in her own way. They had a long way to go, years and risk and death from managing only agents of the Reapers and never the Reapers themselves.

She had a plan A. She'd better work on Plans B through Z.


	57. Chapter 57

Cara had an adrenaline falloff but she kept pacing through it, though her focus was failing her somewhat after the shape of things had seemingly revealed itself, circling the hospital, trying to figure out… trying to grasp…

Where to go from here.

She had said she was going home to Garrus but that felt wrong as she tried to see her way through the near future, so she texted him: "Said I was coming home. I think I was lying."

"At least you're admitting it now."

"Don't want to leave it the way it is. Back into the fray."

"You can have a fray-less day you know."

"In the future, definitely. That is the plan. You and me. No fray. Right now I'm mid-fray."

"Fray away."

She'd stopped shaking from adrenaline but her legs were numb and wobbly. Maybe her brain was too, but she felt that everyone deserved better than what they were getting and she should fix that. This wasn't about Shepard or Fanning, Lal or Cara. It was about utilizing all of them, doing all she could do. Thinking of herself as more of a spectrum than a polarized set of choices. She had all the choices. She should diversify.

Even she deserved better than what she was getting, what she was giving.

She'd done well, now she needed to do better.

It felt like a new page, a new moment, striking while iron was hot, poised and intent. There were transformational moments of a life and this felt like one, quiet and internal, that after this point the way she saw herself, saw others, had to rise to a new level of comprehension, something she had not reached yet but had intuited. It wasn't about rising smoke or death, not even about a lost limb, but more about the potential cost of a life. She took lives into her hands and some were put in her hands, and she needed to survive the outcomes, needed to find the real shape of what it would mean if Reapers arrived tomorrow, each choice, each life burying her in its seemingly infinite significance.

Yased's life and limb had been… was… infinite. Personal. She wasn't backing down from that, she needed to embrace it, own it. Not coldly. That's where most would expect her to go, to harden herself, toughen herself and once more, the vibration of where her personality should go as she created it in the same way she created footsteps and decisions made… would not be about the cold. She was never going to be about the cold. The slow and deliberately forming shape of her future did seem to glow, vibrate, come into being as she seemed less to create it as excavate it.

She needed to make truths, stop treating her personal life like a war, the words of Sun Tzu always counseling "All warfare is based upon deception." She had strategy in her bones and she needed to forge something new. Not lose the strategy… but not always rely on her bones.

Know when she was not at war.

Cycle after cycle after cycle, Reapers had dealt with what was likely the reasonable and the expected.

She couldn't be either of those things.

When she made it back to Yased's room, he was still occupied with visitors, which was so very encouraging. She defined him staying here as a value in the 'good thing' column. They had already established partway that he would be staying here. She would not be uneasy or unwilling to discuss it with Yased. She'd tell him the truth that she was allowed to tell while still keeping her promise to Senar that it would be her responsibility. He would miss his family while they were gone, but they would be back, and if they were not back, that's exactly why he needed to stay here.

Yased had very little power and that frustrated him. She understood that but considered him generationally and situationally worthy of protection. The reality is that on the ship he could certainly be adopted by Dr. Chakwas as a mascot and even learn quite a bit… but it would be a personal favor. It would be done, gladly, and seeing Yased on the ship with his stereotypically withdrawn and cold father would be charming and might even boost everyone's morale…

It might give Cara a buffer between her and Senar…

But it was not worth risking his life and if he did not like that…

It truly was best that it was her decision. He'd done more than enough life risking, and at her inspiration. She would be inspired to protect him.

She waved to Yased, who waved back, she smiled. She didn't interrupt his conversation with new friends. She pointed to Senar and tilted her head, indicating she was going to steal him. Yased gave humorous formal permission with a wave of his hand, Senar's brow raising and Cara's head indicating he follow her into the hallway, which he did.

She turned and walked at a casual stride until he caught up, the forward motion of the active pace stretching out legs that were just beginning to think they were going to be able to sit down after being allowed to hold still temporarily and then the subsiding complaint of her stamina as she moved again. She thanked her legs for being accommodating.

When he reached her pace and stayed at her side she said, eyes still on the patterns on the floor, feet finding their way along the tile symmetrically "You're not my bodyguard and you're not my babysitter. You've been both. Thank you. All the thank you. I needed that. I need you. But even then I should have thanked you more, been more appreciative, complained less. I'm going to try to get out ahead of the curve here, learn some things. I'll take your word for it, that no apologies are needed, from me to you, from you to me. We're past that. You're right. You're also right that you didn't ask for Spectre authorization, that you didn't ask for continued life, that you didn't ask for lungs. They're not debts. They're now done and are realities and you should do what you want with them. I'm going to do what I want with what I have, also without need for apology. Thank you for the offer of being my bodyguard, but I prefer guarding each other. Spectre Senar Tuelon, thank you for babysitting me during my meetings with Sooth. I threw foodstuffs at you and that was ingracious. I don't believe I ever apologized for that either."

She didn't look at his face, imagined him smiling. He was silent until he said "Technically you still have not."

She continued "I apologize for throwing foodstuffs at you. Considering your new position and the shape and direction you wish to take with your life, would you please accompany me to strategic meetings with Sooth? I should have asked you to sit down with us, to contribute your thoughts and your opinions. Granted you're not all that shy as thoughts and opinions go… once you're pushed to having to express them because I'm never going to ask…"

She redirected from that swoop of thought "I'm not good at asking. I'd like to get better. Will you please present yourself as you wish, as you asked, include yourself in my decision making process? Which I should have done before, and you've earned. I'll be on the Normandy studying. I'll be back to visit Yased, but not every day. I'll be consulting with Sooth because she has been compiling what data she has been able to gather regarding Geth movements and missions, communications and intentions. We need to get serious about finding who or what is doing the coordinating. We're moving up the food chain of minions from Saren to Harbinger to whatever's or whoever's next. We do know Sovereign was giving orders once. Sovereign is gone. Someone's still giving orders, and giving them to Geth. Someone or someones, organic or synthetic is directing events. Sooth and I have not changed anything, she's tracking data for analysis now, but the analysis starts soon. I want you there. I'm thinking… picnic."

"What is a picnic?" He sounded like he was smiling, she still didn't look.

"Human word. Get a blanket, put everything you need for the outing in a basket, go out into nature, find a lovely spot, unpack the basket, eat the food contained therein. Traditionally there is insect life disrupting the event of some sort, but there weren't any insects on Mindoir so I can't corroborate, and the bugs on the Normandy are mainly electronic. I can clear away a spot in my cabin. That's as much into nature as I want to go, as Palaven is not all that hospitable."

"And what shall I bring… in my… basket?"

"Whatever you want. Would you teach me how to prepare Drell fruit? I'd really like to learn."

"As you wish."

"As you wish, Senar. I believe we could work better as a team then we have been." She couldn't tell if it was a lack of courage or an overset amount of it that tore her eyes from the tile, turned her directly into his path and threw her arms around him. No words. A new surge of adrenaline, shaking legs and 'I probably should not have done that…' in criticism mostly of the impulsivity of it, but that faded because it seemed right.

It did seem right, continued to. He was too controlled to be startled, wasn't brought up short, only kept his arms out and extended to the side for too long, and then she just as impulsively said "Hug me, I feel stupid standing here like this."

"Is that an order?"

"Yes."

"Very well."

His arms wrapped around her and she felt a physical and an emotional outrush of held breath. She closed her eyes, wrapped in his reassuringly steady synesthesia glow.

He kissed her hair and murmured "This could appear to be an obvious manipulation tactic, Lasam. I am wary of your motivations."

"Are you going to stomp off in offended suspicion?"

"Possibly."

"I believe you've established that I'm stuck with you permanently, yes?"

"Stuck with sounds unpleasant."

"Permanently accompanied by?"

"Somewhat better."

"And true?"

"Yes."

"So we could both be deeply suspicious of obvious manipulation tactics… or we could focus our energies on the real enemy."

"Garrus?"

She laughed because his voice was made of charmed amusement. She said "I was thinking more of Reapers."

"Ah. Them. You have a predictably one-track mind, Lasam."

"So I have been told. If you are my constant companion, and I am yours, I don't want to be at war, I won't be at war. I can't and won't let that happen."

"And what is the alternative?"

"I'm going to trust you."

"I must advise you that trusting me is a historically foolish position to take."

"I aim to change the future, it was a historically foolish position to oppose Reapers also."

"And if I do not deserve trust?"

"Maybe you won't deserve it until you know you really have it."

"You hope that the burden of your trust bears enough weight to make me trustworthy?"

"Sounds kinda stupid when you say it that way."

"I believe that is what I am trying to point out."

"I'm going to try anyway. Trust, picnics and Drell fruit recipes."

"Your conditions for such a gift?"

"I don't think of it as a gift. I think of it as something you have earned, something you deserve."

He said exactly the same way "Your conditions for such a gift?"

She laughed and there was a briefly clouded moment where she thought she really should set conditions… but that was a test, wasn't it? A trusted person doesn't need conditions? She breathed through the laughter until it stopped, breathed along with the pace of his new lungs under his leathers for a moment. She said quietly "That's not how trust works."

"So a declaration, my arms around you and food in a basket, all is well?" He sounded deeply skeptical and that was how his voice was often shaped.

"I'm not asking to be trusted. I have no idea how it's going to work, but despite you telling me it's a bad idea and historically a losing strategy… if my future, or all my futures, involve you, and I do not wish to be at war with you in any future… games theory requires this. New game, opening move."

"Prisoner's dilemma."

"As I have confessed I do not wish to be at war with you, and I am thinking of the future, yes. My move is to trust you, love you, be your family, be your potential companion."

"Conditionally."

"Yes."

"As you stated, Lasam, you have everything. You in a position of everything to lose and me in a position of everything to gain… your attention elsewhere and mine focused on you, you are aware of your vulnerabilities and wish to garner trust to buffer against accumulating losses. I must again advise against it as that makes me appear to be a fool and I am not a fool."

"You could leave and gather everything to you. I would have to stipulate that you are in fact at least somewhat of a fool as 'everything' seems to be defined as 'me' and there's a lot more out there you could gather that isn't as one-track-mindy. You're not staying to save the galaxy. That might happen… but that's technically a side goal of yours. You're staying to save me."

"For myself."

"Yes. There are lots of conditions there. I hear I'm going to have to beg."

"A treasured ambition."

"Well, there's a mental image."

"Several mental images. Also treasured."

And there went her massive flush to her face, the weakness in her legs more pronounced, his arms incrementally tighter. She knew if she stepped away he'd let her go but she didn't want to. Instead she said "I'm working on being offended. I am."

"So you should."

"Theoretically though, I'm getting closer to and not farther away from that goal, you know, if your wiles are on point."

"Do you require a demonstration of wiles?"

"I do not."

"Very well."

"I require a picnic."

"Then I require a basket."

She believed she understood, he understood. They were both masters of the game and the rules were decided.

Pon-Ifa, Sun Tzu, Games Theory, and the stated goals of a Drell entirely certain that his goals were worthy of being achieved despite the odds.

His goal involved Garrus being dead.

Now, that may sound alarming, and of course it is, but where she was trusting him, where she would not allow that trust to be degraded… was that he would not do it himself. He would in fact protect Garrus, die for him, because he had, because he was family, because that…

…would be cheating.

And he was telling the truth that he would cheat…

But not about that.

The ironic part was that she was the one assuring that Garrus's life was going to be at high risk, just as hers was.

Garrus would most likely die under her command.

Senar… need only wait.

She'd better own that. She'd better own that if Senar died, it would be at her command.

She'd better own that if Yased stayed behind, it was because she said so.

From this moment on, she could not afford to be hijacked or countermanded, and she was at the highest risk of that happening.

Because she needed her team. She needed every member. She did in fact need every living sentient creature's good will and might not even succeed with it…

So although it scared her, she pulled back from the hug, her arms still around him. She finally looked at his face, having immersed herself in the glow of synesthesia, faith and trust.

He was appropriately amused, appropriately understanding, and even appropriately warning her that he understood her choice, but he was untrustworthy.

None of that was new information.

Hopefully it was new that she was in fact going to give him what he asked for, what he earned. Honesty. Trust.

She was owning it.

That meant she owned Garrus. She owned Russ. She owned Senar. She owned Yased.

None of that was new information.

There was a corollary to 'if you can't do the time, don't do the crime' and much of that came down to expectation. If there was to be redemption, if there was to be success, inspiration was in fact what guided many Paths.

If Senar was treated as though he were doing the crime… even knowing he wished to… the fact that he held himself back from selfish gain and had repeatedly… despite the fact that his desire and possessiveness grew and did not wane…

If he were accused of such… if he were excluded… he'd already be doing the time for a crime he had not in fact committed. Why not… do the crime? With no honor, no redemption, no trust to be gained, why take further risk with no potential reward at all? Provide trust. Provide potential for cooperative reward. The potential was there, would be there, but she would not condemn him or allow him to be condemned, even from Garrus. He was honest about what he wanted. He wanted her. He followed her will, he said she was safe with him.

At any moment this man could destroy everything she was aiming for, could have already done it at much more vulnerable points of their history.

If he was going to do the crime, he would not provoke her into accusation. He would not provoke Garrus into fury.

He would have to own that he destroyed her mission, destroyed her bond and destroyed her purpose and then he would have to try to live with that with only her contempt as his compensation.

Yes, he could, they all knew, he knew, he could use venom and make her forget…

But he'd know.

Understanding passed between them as it often did, whether through words or eye contact or the shape of actions, the shape of intent.

She looked him in his eyes, giving him the woman he wanted, the woman in his arms, that full potential of trust and love and shared future. She wasn't afraid, she wasn't going to back down or give up on owning him.

He did not own her… yet…

And she must keep that the truth.

She must be Whole. She must be exquisitely honest, the only way through his traps and temptations.

Her palm moved to the side of his face, fingers aligning along curves of his frill. She said with a smile "I need you. I always will. I've been apologizing for that. I won't anymore. It's okay if I ever earn the right to be with you that I'd have to beg you. You've earned it."

There was a tensing, a movement of the muscles around his eyes, surprise and vulnerability, his face tilted into her palm, such small things on his face, tiny involuntary changes that made him look younger, made him look like hers, made her heart pound.

He was hers. She had to remember that. Not potentially, not theoretically. Literally and right now.

It had to be truth to her because it was truth to him.

It was unbearable vulnerability that she had to bear. She leaned up on tiptoe, kissed at his throat where before Benis had a scar, where she lived on and in his skin, where he had treasured memories and Drala'tem and he was inspired.

She whispered "I love you. Thank you, Senar."

Her legs attempted to tremble and she wouldn't allow it. She couldn't afford to tremble anymore.


	58. Chapter 58

Garrus pondered the concept of 'predictably unpredictable' and whether or not that in fact added up to predictable.

Regardless of the hallmarks of his bond mate's decisions… she was his bond mate. She made decisions. He abided by them.

Mostly.

He was the one that had lurched from predictable to unpredictable in his public announcement… or was that in fact predictable because he had told her he would?

Was predictability an ideal? Was unpredictability?

It definitely kept him on talon tips.

He had his bond mate. He had his clan. He was still Councilor and that was almost disappointing in an odd way. Even Turians had turned unpredictable, allowing a human bond mate.

It was, of course, more complicated than that. This was definitely not a precedent, but an exception, a peculiar event, and Russ's induction the same. Still things that were 'wrong' but as though the Vakarian Clan had paid enough in tribute to mask the scent of the blue squeezed from Turian ancestors who were affronted from their supposedly wise and lofty station of judgment. Garrus had enough push back that he wanted to puncture smirks and slights physically. His mother's example and Cara's relative cluelessness… which he absolutely wanted to preserve as whole… kept the smile on his face and the adoration in his eyes. Occasionally he felt the warmth leach out of him and icy rage settle in its place, and he looked away until he could meet her eyes again with something less homicidal.

As a good Turian should, he kept his eyes upon his Avah.

Cara was clueless only about the things that she could… or would… do nothing about. Her scent gave away what her eyes or words did not. She was not going to attempt to change Turian minds. He was less hopeful that Turian minds would change than that new Turians would be born who learned new things and made new choices.

He imagined she focused on the 'New Turians Being Born' in a long-term sense.

The state of war added to the sense of exception and not precedent. Turians understood war. He mentally cringed slightly at the fact that they'd been 'uplifted' for the purpose, and did not feel as proud of it as he always had otherwise. They were exceptional as fighters… that made them valuable.

…that had made them excellent pawns of the Salarians for centuries.

In a real sense, he'd made an excellent pawn for Cara. He was so Turian that the sentiment expressed there made him feel better and not worse.

At least he'd chosen well.

He had done a lot at the Citadel, but being on Palaven, even protected by the Madlis, made him realize how much Palaveni politics and attitudes were not dictated by the Citadel and resurgently pushed back against any external reform. There was little welcome here for him except within the Vakarian Madlis.

Everything he'd done could be wiped out, if not by Reapers, then by someone else taking his job, someone more plate rigid and proud of being uplifted in all the wrong ways.

He decided predictability was a bad thing in a lot of ways he hadn't considered previously. Turian insularity was predictable. Reapers were predictable. Eventually.

He might be replaced by someone who would ride that rebound, someone who could proudly state in their veiled Turian pride code that their marks had not been tainted or divided, their lineage true and their Clan undefiled by the lack of tradition that had been an obvious sign of hubris and desperation. Their loyalties would be unquestioned as Turians were gloriously lost to the predictable 50,000 year cycle of extinction that had produced no new results.

He wanted, desperately wanted, to no longer be Councilor, to leave that part of him behind, to follow his Avah only, a virce with no plate and thin hide.

She was predictable in her results? Except during catastrophic failure and death…

Perhaps he had miscalculated, making his announcement too early. Maybe full-blown Reaper invasion had really been the only cover under which his bond would have not been the headline.

He had his own resurgent pushback against that emotionally. Regardless of the stress of so many things wanting to kill them and keep them apart, he wasn't going to regret what he'd done.

Only reflect.

Did she regret it?

He smiled. No. She did not. Fortunately there he had no doubts. She created no doubts. Moments away from her were darker, enough to make him question what moved in the shadows. When she was back she'd light whatever space they held together.

Sometimes that was worse, because sometimes there were things moving in the shadows that the bright light revealed… but he preferred the straightforward.

He found it difficult to represent a race that would not accept his bond mate, had alienated and nearly killed Russ and only valued either of those people as exceptions that would prove a rule – only the powerful could afford to keep pets of such ostentatious social cost.

Madlis walls listened and he imagined that the most whispered adage from non-Vakarian mouths was "Heavy feet leave tracks, but not for long." As though the Vakarians were some self-satisfied and overgrown herbivore, something to be brought down easily by a coordinated Clan.

But if he didn't represent these dark-sliced people some other Turian would do it, and that other Turian would be predictably predictable. All precedents followed, all diversity stamped out as corruption. Then Turians gone, a whispered myth like Protheans, luck spires and kirrisat shapes pondered over by future peoples who looked different but faced the same fate and worried about internal power struggle until power was taken from them.

There was something remotely cold and arterial-spray hot about Cara. He occasionally wondered what it was that caused her to watch her colony on Mindoir get rounded up, raped and slaughtered, burned alive…

How a 16-year-old girl could have sat still through it.

What that did to the inside of someone's head or heart.

He had to admit it, he found that inexcusably cold, un-Turian and even inhuman when he took those circumstances out of her context.

All the talk of Senar's about Pon-Ifa, her smile as she assured Garrus she'd slaughter him at the game… as much as he'd slaughter her in hand to hand…

The potential for cold in that smile.

The point wasn't really that she'd endured all that pain… it was that she'd contained it, controlled it, made that call.

Felt like hell about it later, but contained that as well.

His instinct was that a person was blasted open by that level of trauma. Was there really nothing in her that would blast her open, make her angry, make her care in the ways that other people cared? Ways that were much more easily comprehended?

He loved her, but Spirits, was she wrong… or unfathomable in so many ways…

He could imagine the sort of thing he'd been taught about humans, the war barely over, her the illuminated example of human behavior. Her story spun in a Turian direction, familiar and chilling on its own, familiar in tone and in the faces of young Turians eager to learn The Way. A dissection of a human, metaphorically pinned to a display board, gutted and analyzed.

"Here you see a human girl. Note the small size, the coloring. On Earth, evolution has taken a path such that poisonous creatures are brightly colored as a warning to predators. Slavers killed her parents. She didn't fight. She didn't protest. She hid. She didn't try to save anyone. She disavowed her own name. She is a dead thing. Humans believe they have what they call souls, and that those souls live on after they've died. If that's true… and this is from their own lips… this girl… by their own myths about themselves… is a ghost. No loyalty. No name. No clan. They're all like this. They have nothing to live for, loyal only to their selfish urges. To set free their ghost is to take them from the misery they live in, sundered from all the things we know matter. They fight like wild things, but they have no honor, no courage. They all want to die. They say of Turians that you'll never see our backs until we're dead. This pathetic child is proof that you'll never see a human's face, only a ghost's back. Pity her but do not be fooled. She is poisonous. It is not her fault, she is a child, she had no Clan to guide her. When you see a poisonous wild thing, you kill it so they do not breed and bite. You kill it so your Clan stays safe from their mindless advance. They have to have stories about souls because they have no Spirits. Their bodies are prisons, their lives miserable and selfish. Take a good look. It is a mercy to set them free."

He could see it, feel it from other Turians. She was a ghost with no face.

He couldn't even deny it to himself. Her face was manufactured. He was grateful for her manufactured face. She understood the need for it. Now he understood even more the need for it.

She'd had no clan, no ancestors, nobody… and she'd had the strength to survive it.

If she saw herself tacked to a display board in effigy, her hair pointed out as a sign of her internal sickness, she'd feel sorry for the ignorant Turians teaching easy hate and simplistic philosophy, all geared toward what Turians liked to do – kill something righteously.

She'd contain it, she'd understand it, and ask him to do the same.

That's what she was doing.

He contained it, he didn't rise to the level of understanding.

He wondered if it was her nature to forgive and find a way to understand as blindly as Turians found a way to categorize and kill.

At least she didn't forgive Reapers.

Maybe that's because she didn't understand them.

Spirits help us if she ever understands them.

Turns out, he's a good Turian. It would feel clean to get back to killing things righteously. But if Cara was willing to forge greater good by denying parts of her nature and loosing others, he would do the same.

This woman had died, literally and figuratively many times, become a ghost of herself… and had fought her way back to herself without clan, without support, without anybody on her side because she never exposed her flank…

Except to him.

And Spirits, he loved her so much, the cold and the hot of her, the remote and the intimate, and all the things about her he did not understand.

She wasn't a pawn. He could believe she was a ghost, a Spirit, one of the Turian myths of something generated that embodied something. A creature blessed with the ability to leave and return to her body at the Will of the People.

Okay, so those people were speciesist and they spent a lot of money getting it done but it sounded fitting the other way.

He was at the moment tapping his stylus, the paperwork of being Councilor making C-Sec paperwork look like a dream job. C-Sec paperwork had been describing petty events from his point of view. This was galactic information poured into him. C-Sec had been frustrating, and although he could exert the power of the Council office, mostly he experienced helplessness on what felt like an infinite scale, fed on a stream of reports that he knew were lacking the real information required. Polls and noise that were over-amped distractions.

He ran the risk of moments of inattention meaning he would miss a true threat because he was so accustomed to distractions.

Thankfully, blessedly, he heard Cara enter the rooms, tossed the datapad and stylus aside and leaned back in his chair with a relaxation of the tension in his shoulders and jaw he hadn't been aware of until it was gone.

Fast footsteps, running, and they weren't heavy, just enthusiastic. No Clan would find her footprints, he was certain of it. She rounded the corner and launched herself at him once she saw him, moving faster, arms around his cowl and his hands at her waist, pulling her into his lap.

He should be terribly curious about what just happened, but he really didn't care, didn't want to hear about Senar or Yased or any of the stresses that threatened to pull her apart. He just wanted to lessen those stresses. He didn't speak, she was squeezing tight.

He resisted the urge to attempt to dissect her to understand and categorize.

Whether it was from his own people's whispers and smirks, a weapon in the dark, an insult in the air or coveting… from whatever source he just wanted to protect her from it… them… and make it about being safe.

There was plenty of time to be unsafe later.

He closed his eyes, arm around her waist and his arm supporting her back, a hand in her hair. He breathed her in. She still smelled of metal but it was fading. She'd been in her fight and he wanted to help her forget it.

They'd survived, they were together and that's all he cared about, the world narrowed down in focus to what mattered, what he valued, what he should not take for granted.

She said breathlessly "Dance with me."

She'd never asked him to dance. He teased "Do you even like dancing?"

"The way you do it, yes."

The way he did it was to pick her off the floor and never let her feet touch down. That's the way he liked it too. He said "With you hanging on like a wet virce trying to climb a tree to get away from a flood?"

"Yes, exactly like that. You are the best tree."

He said "So you already live somewhere that has a tree."

"The best one."

He kissed her hair, stood without dislodging her. She helped. She was an expert clinger. Her arms around his cowl, her legs around his waist, the warmed curve of her thighs a seemingly utilitarian necessity of the clinging, except for her tensed and relaxed muscles that made clinging an activity and not passivity.

Out of that rhythm he bent his mouth to her ear and hummed. Turians didn't sing and neither did she, but he hummed, with her head down on chest plate, one of her hands moving to spread her delicate fingers along the vibrating span of vocal and sub-vocal expression. There was a lazy gyroscopic spin to the rhythm of her thighs, the hum of his throat, the movement of his legs across the open space of the floor and the sway of his upper body holding her, controlled dips and turns.

If the Spirits could not appreciate this clinging, poisonous and glorious creature that did not need to stand in imperious demand in order to be obeyed…

Screw the Spirits.

Yeah, you heard me.

Screw you guys if you don't love her like I do.

If you knew how this felt… how she feels…

You would understand why I'm not even a little bit sorry for what I've done, how I've stolen her and kept her, how she wants me to, lets me…

If you could smell, feel, taste her complications and simplicity…

He stopped thinking and his surge of self-satisfied defiance blended into rougher humming, interrupted by deeper breathing, a tightening of her thighs that couldn't keep their rhythm because his clinging virce was spun into weakness, the warmer shift of her scent into desire that bloomed on her around him like sunlight.

The perfect kind of predictable where her fight faded away and he held the woman with her and his ambitions cast aside as too heavy and too hot.

The horrifically cold image of her dissected and presented in the worst light echoed in his mind and he shook it off as shadow and darkness, none of which had any power over him now. Now the only theme of that image changed to what he knew he could have, what he knew he could do.

'Here you see a human girl.'

Here I hold a human woman.

'Note the small size, the coloring.'

Thank the Spirits for those blessings. Her thighs had lost any rhythm, his throat had lost its vibrating dedication to dance and now her scent, his body tuned to her with Reverie sharpness and possessive ownership made those things blessings.

'On Earth, evolution has taken a path such that poisonous creatures are brightly colored as a warning to predators.'

And sometimes the coloring means she's beautiful. Deadly and beautiful.

'Slavers killed her parents. She didn't fight. She didn't protest. She hid. She didn't try to save anyone. She disavowed her own name.'

She fought for her own life. She won. She fights for other people's lives with the same dedication, practice and determination. She forged her own name.

'She is a dead thing.'

She was a dead thing. Now she's alive and she's mine.

'Humans believe they have what they call souls, and that those souls live on after they've died. If that's true… and this is from their own lips… this girl… by their own myths about themselves… is a ghost. No loyalty. No name. No clan.'

She doesn't believe she has a soul. She was a ghost. She is loyal to me. She has our name. She has our clan.

He lost interest in the rest of accusation and cold Turian description, fixated on the word 'our' as his hum faded to silence, then a groan against her lips, her sigh and tightening of her arms and legs around him.

He didn't have to care if Tuelon gave her these clothes anymore, he'd replace them. As long as he got to shred them off her, which he did and she, bless her, did not give a damn any more than he did.

The shy woman she'd been around him no longer existed. He could bring her out with words and teasing if he wanted, make her rise to the surface to snap at bait if he asked her if she wanted sex on his desk.

She'd sputter and fuss and that was expected but it was now an inside joke, a running and now increasingly ironic persona that only appeared with words. Reverie otherwise took her whole and both of them had lost interest in novelty of location, shredded like her clothes.

Her hands were frantic pressed warmth, finding the fastenings of his clothing blind, her mouth against his, her thighs twisting and hips lifting, his arms and hands shifting on her body to support her. Sometimes she moved slowly and lingered, sometimes she was ravenous and greedy, and whatever pace she set, he'd take the other path somewhere in the long hours of Reverie.

With the strain and pace and frantic movement, she was headed for what she called 'sudden death' and that was entirely welcome, so acutely hungry that her tiny nails would scratch at him and she would engulf him in one stroke, an ecstatic force of 'all in' as the expressed state of her nature in her encompassing way.

Her hand glided along his cock in one slow, slick welcoming, Reverie from his mouth and now along her numbing palm causing a slow, suspended groan from them both, until she knew he'd move her hips where she needed them, knew he'd surge for her, knew she'd claim him fully without reservation and with her gleeful solemnity.

She had asked him and he had told her, slow teasing thrusting was a beautiful thing where he could watch her bite her lip and tilt her head, and he would do that later, but being able to join suddenly and completely was something so Turian he doubted he could explain.

She hadn't asked him to explain, understood things being inexplicable, but he still tried to find words when it happened.

Maybe someday he could find eloquence but she didn't try to find words either, small and ragged and pale things against the gift of full immersion, being always too much for her and the too much she chased with her righteous greed.

He imagined she dreamed of exactly what it meant to him, her time spent unconscious and overcome something not of neutral passivity but like the tensing of her thighs and her hand on his throat, the reverse of anticipation, the height of repletion.

He was inside her in the clutching, tensing and near questioning and then satisfied keen of her throat that reached her lips, as he tasted it on her tongue, time dilated and her ecstatic motions and clinging.

Wherever she was, wherever she went, she loved him from there, always would. The soul she did not believe in would find her way back to her body after being overwhelmed, and he would be here when she woke to him, and he would find words and expressions of his own, find hers in the hours of Reverie that was all the reason he needed to want to win any fight.

He stayed with her, joined, murmurs and swaying, danced with her, danced for her, and knew she heard him and felt him in whatever dream of bliss carried her to where she whispered his name and sighed with her body clinging to him, her soul on a journey where they were together for every swaying dance step.

She'd be back. He'd be here with her, when she returned, when her eyes opened and she smiled and wherever she'd gone must have been heaven.

Predictable or unpredictable didn't matter anymore.

As long as she did both of those things with him, he couldn't see why he would care about the distinction.


	59. Chapter 59

Senar contemplated the state of being disarmed by a master of the game.

There was a small Drell sanctuary for prayer in the hospital, thoughtfully warmer, drier and quieter than the corridors and public spaces intended for Turians. He found himself there often as he despised hospital rooms and the distractions of constant movement and noise. This small room had glowstone, sand and the walls draped in shimmering fabric.

He must analyze the state of being disarmed.

He must analyze the mastery.

He must analyze the game.

He must analyze his next move.

He chose a glowstone, swirled his fingertips in the surface of the sand table to create a depression for it to rest in, its place in the sand determined for the brief moments granted him to choose it himself. A reminder that time passes, dunes accumulate and blow away, and meditation is a controlled space where larger concepts can be writ small in sand, symbols contemplated. An illusory moment but one of created memory and intent.

In essence sympathetic magic.

Potentially through ritual a small human woman deciphered.

In practical terms a place of refuge and peace where he would not open his mouth and spill unrefined truth.

It was traditional to draw with the fingertips a symbolic representation of what concerned him in the cast light of the stone, but he would not draw a small human woman to be puzzled over by the next visitor. Possibly Yased.

He imagined Yased feeling conflicted over the heresy of it but rubbing out the figure with a furtive palm, saying in his pained embarrassed tone "Really, Dad?"

It made him smile.

Somehow, yes. Really. Dad.

He contemplated the nature of his concerns, drew the outline of a Drell hand with palm upturned. Not human, symbolic enough, fused fingers. Palms upturned was a traditional pose for prayer and meditation.

The pledge of wrist binding condensed from the whirling chaos of his thoughts, brought forth by the image of an open palm. Comforting in that he was capable of coherent thought, condemning in the content of that thought. The memory was of the moment of the vow he had taken with Irikah, the vow he had failed to keep: "What you once held tight in your own fist will belong to us, held together in our devoted bound hands, and no trial shall be so great that we cannot hold it between us, shared." The memory of Simfeh bark incense and glowstone and Irikah's beautiful face.

He searched his memory for what he had thought of those words then.

It had been an empty metaphor, as imaginary as saying that wings would sprout from their backs and give them the power of flight. To his state of mind the vow was composed of flourished and faulty language, but he could not have her without saying such things in ritualized form. He believed he understood ritualized form. Perhaps, unfortunately, he had too well, negating the symbolic content and carrying out ritual and form in battle sleep.

Always battle sleep, even as he assured himself he was awake.

He pondered for a moment the paradox of dreams distracting one away from the realization that the absurd circumstances must of course mean one was dreaming.

His training had provided the foundation of ritual, deep thought and practice, devotion and intellectual content until that fell away and was replaced with him as a conduit, a sacred channel for invoked forces. But those forces were polished lies and violence. Never the Gods.

His ideal had been thoughtless completion of action with preparation such that the channel was pre-ordained through observation and preparation and could go no other way.

He wondered if the Hanar had not decided to rescue the Drell until they had discovered that they had a doctrine of dissociation from responsibility written into their psyches, at which point they became of use. They had destroyed their own planet, they felt no responsibility, they could destroy individuals nicely.

What did that say about the absurd circumstances he found himself in?

What did that say about his vows taken unless those vows were geared toward his ability to kill?

Looking at Irikah, gazing at her beauty and promise as they faced each other on their knees he had made only one vow that he validated with what he knew he could provide: "I will kill anyone that hurts you."

A vow he had not spoken aloud.

And so he had killed those who had hurt her. Not only killed. Harmed. Pained. Tortured.

He had not succeeded in killing all those that hurt her. Not himself. He had tried. He had harmed, pained and tortured himself, had hoped for, chased and even begged in his prideful way for the Gods to grant him death.

But he had to earn it, and the Gods were closer to Irikah than he was, and he relied upon their judgment.

Disarmed. Open palm. No trial shall be so great.

He could not yet speak to Irikah again, still sundered. Perhaps he would hear her again if he walked leagues of dry penance.

How many leagues?

How dry?

Which penance to carry through each footstep?

He had many choices in proposed penance and defiance of penance, and unfortunately felt he would complain to his dead wife about being unable to possess another woman he not only wanted, but deserved, and had been promised.

Irikah would perhaps understand. He did not wish to require her understanding on such a point.

Disarmed he still had two hands, hands he valued more as closed fists, hands that even if in open prayer pose would close to fists as soon as trial was placed in them, and he would seek that trial if it was not granted by fate.

So his open palms had always been weapons, promised to the Hanar or given in silent and unwanted vow to his wrist bound because it was the only use he could find in them.

His open palms were of value upon Irikah's skin but with her heart placed there they closed to fists because they knew no other way to be of value in the greater galaxy.

Irikah had altered his nature. That he knew. Not enough to show to any person who did not know him before her eyes met his through his scope. Not enough to make him Whole, but enough to make him… something. Something rather than nothing. Placed in mathematical terms he had been a cipher, zero, calculated and cunning, and she had added value. He had beheld love. He had beheld family. He had beheld grace. True and sustained things. True things outside himself, but they were no longer doubted. He did not believe he could achieve them, but he no longer doubted they were phantoms and lies.

He was the phantom and the lie. But he had an opposite, and he loved her, adored her, marveled over her gifts, their son. Still unable to detach from his detachment, analysis and easy lies that he told to comfort and keep her from his knowledge that he amounted to zero added value. He could only subtract.

Had he truly not altered her nature as Cara supposed? Her transformation from alive to dead and the direct line to his responsibility clouded his attempt at grasping her forgiveness in open palms when there was so much blood and hatred there.

Cara had not asked him to change his nature. She had only asked that he be worthy of trust, and admitted where he was trustworthy.

Cara had rearranged the board. He had been hijacked to guard what he sought to plunder. Trusted.

It was, as always in her, the riskiest and potentially most loss-heavy path to take, the only path she could take to secure his presence and obedience.

He could reject that role, reject her proposed trust as the obvious manipulation tactic he called it, but that was what she had done. Named her vulnerability. Named her need. Named him as guardian.

If he rejected that, he rejected her and in her disappointment, she had the right to reject him and they both knew that.

Gift giving could be seen two ways, giving someone what they believed was desired, needed or wanted…

Or socially encoded messages, as symbolic as the sand table images. Sympathetic magic made real. A greater gift given than could be reciprocated was often a sign of social dominance, of debt, of pointing out differential in potential and status.

His Lasam knew this and with her there was always the encoded message and the debt. It was traditional between them, unspoken and entwined as they were, as they were forced to be.

As he forced them to be.

So with Cara it would be all those things. Her approval of worthiness, her assertion of trust, her encoded message. Rejection of the state of war. Offer of truce with a balance of power between them, roles redefined again.

Lasam, I salute your gift and trial, placed in disarmed palms, with me unable to drop your gift or put it down because you challenged me to carry your trust carefully in both hands and protect it from what usually dwells there.

'No trial shall be so great that we cannot hold it between us, shared.'

A trial in the form of a Turian bond mate?

A trial in the form of a disappointed yet exalted son?

A trial in the form of a woman that he could not strike at with his fists and could not hold in his open palms?

A trial in the form of a man who knew patience was the only path to his goal yet grew impatient with all the tricks and trials that went into generating his form of patience?

What was the game?

Her home board, her strength was always defiance.

His home board, his strength was always patience.

Framed that way her move came into sharp relief, and on the correct board of interaction. She had defied his nature and his intent by giving her trust and heart, denying him her body by ordering him to follow her, hug her as she promised a picnic as consolation…

If he suspected a fingerspan's length of her playing him, just a shade more intent to line him up with other Drell dolls and have a tea party…

It made him want to laugh and it made his hands tighten into his more comfortable position, fists. Not in the sense that he wished to hit her, but in the sense that he was not entirely certain he wouldn't line up with the other dolls for the pleasure of her company.

What were his options? Be alone with his fists or be with her, bearing palms full of her trust and unspoken conditions because those conditions had already been spoken and Drell never forgot.

If Vakarian wondered if she feared Senar's advances…

She'd say no. She would not be lying. She had more than enough defiance, whimsy and creative stamina to stall him forever as he explained the carving of Drell fruit, as she spoke to a Geth Prophet, as…

As he was unable to watch her sleep as he had grown accustomed to doing. To have that right taken from him by her bond mate, who had ironically learned from Senar's actions that Cara forgave those she loved their trespasses when those trespasses had practical answers to problems she could not solve herself.

When those that loved her gave her what she could not ask for, could not accept as her idea, because those gifts delivered to her something selfish in herself she would not honor but would not deny.

As every moment she spent of her life was clothed in whimsy and he was permitted to see it. As the Geth Prophet wished to be there, as Garrus had no bar to the cabin door or her body, as Senar waited with his patience that was as much a part of him as her whimsy and ruthlessness were parts of her and need not be manufactured for his sake as she had them in abundance…with finger sandwiches and discussions of cookies…

…and how to annihilate Reapers…

Charm from her left palm and eradication from her right.

He would be there for that, every moment of that, charmed as the Turian, Geth, Salarian, human, Asari…

…even Krogan…

He closed his eyes and sighed.

Damn her. Truly damn her and then bless her doubly. That seemed to be the pattern he could not escape, the rebound of attempting to condemn her to the hard and the cold, failing to affect her as he wished while… fruit salad… was what was in her heart.

Had he not known Irikah's grace, he would suspect more deeply that Cara meant to harm him. She did not. Any injury he suffered in her presence was self inflicted and he could not blame her. She had offered, asked, tried to order… that he leave her, that she would only harm him, as he refused to go.

The fascination of Siha had drawn him forward step by step from prayer over Nassana's body to now, inexplicable in its convoluted path.

He could not go back to being the man that prayed with Spectres waiting upon his notice. The pretense of his final prayer, expecting to die and leave an attractive and enigmatic corpse.

It did sound restful in comparison.

Did he require rest?

He examined that possibility, the potential of distance and refocusing of his newly-minted self, time to learn that self. Time to prove he was capable of distance, capable of perspective. A potential feint, as though he had come to his senses and conceded the game, taken instead a position dependent upon his personal power and gain.

It would be a lie.

She might die in the meantime as he waited and plotted, bled off his frustration in self-directed action and planned return to her life a new man with his own accomplishments as Spectre, Hanar Compact defeated and personal renown among the Drell assured.

It was possible. Her words echoed with exactly the right touches of self deprecation and humor: 'I would have to stipulate that you are in fact at least somewhat of a fool as 'everything' seems to be defined as 'me' and there's a lot more out there you could gather that isn't as one-track-mindy.'

You are correct, as you so often are, Drala'tem. I am in fact at least somewhat of a fool.

In the spirit of the gamble, I must cut my losses or double down. He was capable of cutting his losses and returning another day, it was a strategy he'd employed often in his career when factors did not align. He could leave Yased and Cara, create his own missions, spend a week buried in petite human redheads and move on with his life… or his death. Cease being at least somewhat of a fool. Wake from dreaming. Play his own game, on deliberately uneven ground, with people who would lose to him, deserve to lose to his patience, could not counter effectively with defiance and the fact that he did not wish to strike.

He briefly considered the satisfaction of living a life once again where defiance was not an effective counter to his patience. Where he knew he was the greatest Pon-Ifa player in existence, possibly who ever existed. Where Irikah was alive and ever welcoming, where Kolyat grew up with both parents Whole.

Where he did not wish to bury himself in petite redheads for a week.

At least a week.

Sands, the things he could do right now with his cock and his frustrated fantasies.

He could certainly find and methodically exhaust a bevy of petite redheads, but he did have the dawning concern that none of them would have her eyes and he would not leave the exercise satisfied but exhausted in different ways, finding in practice that he did not, in fact, accept any substitute and did not wish to touch anyone else. Approximately seven minutes into his week-long sojourn he would find himself cold, repelled and paying the elaborate bill without a qualm as he considered how this would have been managed better had he thought it through.

He was more than somewhat of a fool.

Did it come to that, that he was accustomed to being the lead and now he was the supporting player, the volunteer understudy with all the lines memorized, practiced, no longer using his spare time to think of how to kill the next target but instead thinking of all the uses he could potentially have for his and her open palms, her hair and her eyes?

He had had absolute faith that Irikah would always be there for him as he wished, when he wished, and she was. Until she was not. Assured as an asset, he had not obsessed upon her, but upon his next mission.

Cara was his next mission, his only mission. Even she had known that if they saved the galaxy, he still had more work to do if at that time she did not belong to him.

She had defied him, dared him to become impatient, to lose his signature control and lose not only her game, but his game. She had gambled that the challenge framed that way would be as irresistible as she was. She knew full well that his loss of control might result in his self awareness or in failure of everything she held close to her heart. She needed him, but she was surrounded by the extraordinary, the Prophets and Speakers for the Spirits. He was eclipsed by her and all she offered was in fact being a glorified understudy, bodyguard and a babysitter, an empty basket?

If he told her he must go, she would bravely wish him well, cry and turn aside. He would discover that it was too late for his pride, too late for his dignity, too late for any goal other than surrender in depths of green, the culmination of Drala'tem and his treasured images.

If he left her now, as his attention was on his own life and rehabilitation of pride, Vakarian's attention would be on blocking his path of return, distance from Cara proving Senar would leave her when she needed him most. She would not allow herself to need him again. Cara would tell him when he wished to return that his mission was too important. Vakarian's will and influence would grow stronger each day, bond and Reverie and shared success creating a waking reality where Manipar was a faded and abandoned dream.

She would cut her losses. She would be convinced she had woken from delusion, aided by her bond mate. At the moment Senar believed Garrus was responsible entirely for his Spectre status. Another gift with its encoded message. Senar could trade professional status gained for personal attachment grown brittle and losing all living elasticity and hold upon her, crumbling to the dead and darkened past.

No, his pride was not worth that loss. He must stay with her, wanted to stay with her, would not leave, that idea set aside as distasteful and counterproductive, analyzed and categorized for its board, its purpose and its potential for gain or loss.

It was a practical plan and perhaps even wise, to establish himself, gain his own power base and fight his own way…

But it appeared pride no longer drove his choices.

She did.

He had declared war. She had declared truce. He had needed war because he needed surrender.

She would not be at war, nothing for him to push against, her immune to temptation, him drawn to undimmed green, now with open palms itching with need from the ground he'd gained, the promise given of Manipar.

And once her fight was done?

She would no longer need him.

That he examined for truth and lies, self deception and utility. Cara would always love, always want Senar… yet she would not always be able to afford him when her will was… diluted. As she had stated under venom blur… she wished to give Garrus all he desired once her fight was done.

Garrus desired that Senar no longer pursued and strained the kind-heartedness of his bond mate.

If she died before Senar became her reason to live he would want to kill her himself. It was a fantasy that lasted the flash of his temper until his hands were on her, always securing her, never harming her, always ending in moans and screams that did not resemble pain of any sort.

That he examined for depth and breadth and the aspect of illusion. Did he want her because she was denied? Without a doubt.

Once granted would she be shorn of depth, breadth and illusion? Would she return to his first impression of a completely unremarkable, nondescript human female who would not catch his attention if she passed him on a walkway?

That occupied him with analysis of his ignorance, knowledge and delusion and the blend of each.

Here his nature was incontrovertible and would determine that outcome overwhelmingly. He knew the paths to pain and pleasure. Through force of his training, force of his experience and force of his venom it was impossible to imagine a circumstance where she would not want him once his hands and mouth were on her body, thoughts and whispers in her ears and mind.

If he were to consider game boards other than defiance and patience, love and trust belonged to her and those things she might teach him. Lust belonged to him. Once the shadow of her footstep moved toward that board, she was lost. She would be his. He was unable to fathom what touching her could bring in negative result, trying to force himself to consider worst case. This brought him blank patches of the inability to conceive of 'bad sex' in terms of her, in terms of him, in terms of the fact that he never had, never would fail to evoke physical pleasure or inspire others to bring it out in him. That was in truth not a concern. Her heart pounded and her breath caught when she was near him and she did not, would not deny that she wanted him, and for excellent reasons.

She had never challenged him on the subject of lust, ticklish and nervous and intimidated in his presence. Again for excellent reasons. She would not challenge him there, would leave that board to him and to the treasured but imaginary future where she would be free to allow even her shadow to venture there.

She would never propose an affair, propose stolen moments, play on that board with any pretense of victory.

Unfortunately.

Her lack of blunders, presence of humility and clear analysis of her own abilities and his, admiring his gambits while evading or disarming them proved to him that she knew what she was doing.

It occurred to him that with the end of his brief war that had lasted less than an hour, he would tell Yased that he must remain on Palaven and that was Senar's wish and will. He would not make her do it.

And he must secure a basket.

The solution to his problem of redheads without sufficiently inspiring green eyes occurred to his mind, which produced a searing image; Cara's face, blindfolded, with her licking at her lips, slick with his venom. Not a child, but childlike. Not innocent but potential layers of flawless deceit. Slippery and slick as her lips, laughter and disarming whimsy or calculation with the authority of gravity. Accustomed to the tailored deep call of Reverie and unquestioned devotion. Accustomed to her delicate fingertips able to caress all the information and power she needed from the data stored that she knew how to reach legally and illegally. Able to point or whisper and the loyal killed for her or died for her.

And what did he have to offer this rapt, expectant woman?

It surged and he knew it was true, knew she knew it was true. He loved her. He would never willingly leave her.

He would wait for her shadow and her light to venture onto his board of her own will.

This woman cannot be taken, she must be earned. She must be given.

He wanted nothing more than her, not his own status, not his own pride, not his own Path.

Ask the man who stood over Nassana Dantius's body with sharp and hard pride and suicidal intent, would he give up his pride for this Siha?

No. He had not given up his pride for Irikah.

Ask himself now.

She did not demand his pride. She demanded his patience. He was the one demanding that it would cost him his pride.

With that, he would no doubt give his pride freely packed in a basket beside galifen tarts.

As for Gods or anyone else knowing, if Cara knew that Senar Tuelon could be ordered to live or die, ordered to sit or stand, stay or leave, and could not be ordered to not love her… that secret would be held in her heart, never to be stolen by another. She would ensure that all knew he was valued, loved, worthy of fear and praise, invaluable… because she was who she was, would know how to hold that carefully in her open palms for all to see.

The man who stood over Nassana's dead body and prayed to silent Gods because it made other people believe that Gods listened to him lifted his eyes to see not a Siha, but himself now, in the Turian home world and Capital city, his son alive, bearing his birth name as a Spectre, having defeated Collectors and experiencing clear lungs granted by Commander Shepard, the Turian Councilor and his son…

And he hated himself. He hated the depth of delusion piled upon the burden of unrequited but still-granted love and pride of place at a picnic on the Normandy…

And he smiled, acknowledged his own hatred of his entitled being, though he must have learned some compassion from Irikah, from Cara. He understood that man, understood his hatred, acknowledged his judgment and his place in time.

But Cara was worthy of love, worthy of his pain, worthy of his patience.

He had so often considered the moments of death in his existence to be the only ones with meaning. She knew he would die for her.

She would know that he would live for her, and live well.

It may not be the will of the sand, yet it was his will, and the sand would do as it always did and he could not tell which way the dunes would form.

Just as he knew that he would read each moment in a fight, find his target, pull his Path from the chaos, he would read each moment with her, find his goal, pull his Path from her chaos.

It would always be a good day to die or a good day to live.

There would be a moment of truth and he would find it if he walked at her side.

There was a moment in all planning, a moment where potential tipped from unknown chaos to known and even inevitable order. He experienced that peace, the blessing of his confidence in each measured step taken.

Perhaps it was love. Inevitable that steps taken at her side, in her presence, would be the most valued steps he could take.

So be it.

Tradition was to leave the stone in place to illuminate the symbol. It would be watched and preserved, swept away by a Keeper of the Sands in a week, even here, likely an itinerant Drell cleric making a circuit of blessed and swept sand tables like this throughout Cipritine.

Instead he removed the stone, brushed the sand from it carefully, replaced it alongside its neutral, illuminating kin and erased both the impression of the stone and the stylized image of a Drell hand, replacing it with the impression of his open palm pressed into the sand instead, unlit and unheralded, literal and specific. Not a symbol, but a vow. Reality no longer in question.

He would not cut his losses, he had no losses, he had gains. He had a sacred maybe from the mouth of a woman who knew better than to promise what she could not give, and knew better than to deny what it was she wanted in order to not provoke him into proving it to her.

'No trial shall be so great that we cannot hold it between us, shared.'

He supposed he should be proud of himself for not leaving a tracing of an obvious Turian form with several knife wounds in specific spots.

But he liked Garrus.

He did not wish to admit that, but he believed Cara… and Garrus… and Yased… all knew it and would not force those words from him.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Senar gathered thoughts and strategies, sat beside Yased as he slept.

He wished to lie. He wished to work venom into his son's skin so he would be more cooperative.

He kept his hands in his lap and tried to hold off his acrobatic imagination from spinning a clear story with a pithy value to be learned. He often only needed seconds to solidify the bones of a lie that would sell itself with the whole cloth he spun to drape the form. He was still and would always be proud of that, a skill born from the nature of his mind, expertise hard won and well practiced.

To counter the urge to tell one grand and smooth lie, he would tell several contradictory truths.

When Yased woke he told him "I know you do not wish to hear it, and I do not wish to say it. I do not wish for you to be on board the Normandy when she leaves Palaven. I would like to be a prophet and say that I know the truth, that I know the future, that I know what is best. The only things I can attempt to decide is what is best for me, and also what is best for you based on what I know of the worlds. Had I wished you to be like me I would have trained you to be like me from age six. Had I believed my way of seeing the world was the best way to see the world, I would never have fallen in love with your mother. I knew when you were born that I was not right with the worlds or even right in the worlds. They might be better places were I removed from them, except she told me she loved me and your life told me you needed me. You and your mother were my 'better' and knowing who I was, I tried to keep you in that better state, to not have to see or know who I was, what I did. This is not to say I am not proud of who I am. I am… proud. I am not better. So believe me when I tell you, when my life tells you and my choices throughout my life show… I wished for you to have better, to be better, than I. Through those choices your mother was murdered, you were abandoned. I sit at your side knowing that I owe you… not only as your father, but as a Spirit and as any story of justice might tell, I should somehow restore to you all the years of abandonment and loss, redeem them and we would be right with each other. I should change and I do things your way. I should learn a different way from the way that guided my life with you. It would be a great temptation to give you the wish of your heart, an adventure close to family and dearly loved ones, the riches of importance and pride."

Senar paused for a moment, reiterations of theme and intent overwhelming in the simplicity of being a mortal attempting to sort this in any way for sense, knowing he would only create chaos… to allow chaos to speak for itself.

"I wish to create order for you and I cannot. There are truths that cannot be spoken, that sound trite. 'The love between a father and a son is strong' is diluted in meaning because obviously many fathers and sons share no love. Perhaps if I were to put that close to another truth and say they were of similar magnitude to our personal experience. 'Irikah Krios was an extraordinary and deeply loved woman and her loss destroyed the desired Paths of the two men that loved her most, both unwilling to leave the spot where her last footprint shadowed the sand.'"

"So I wish to give you a new Path, new family, new purpose, walk beside you, and I have and I will and you must believe that I wish to do so."

"The Normandy cannot be your new home. I cannot tell you exactly why except to tell more truths that carry the same weight as the other truths I tell, depths not to be misunderstood or underestimated. Garrus Vakarian was raised in a culture of expectation and fulfillment of purpose in war. He is a product of his people, perhaps the best among them. I was taken from my family to train for war, but this man's family is war. They embody it. He embodies it. This man recalls one day of his life, one day as deeply as you or I recall the day we knew of your mother's death. In the middle of some falsely bright night on the Citadel, Garrus Vakarian received a news alert that Commander Lal Shepard had died, her ship sheared to scrap by an unknown, undetected enemy. She was lost along with many of her crew. In that moment the likely truth was that Garrus Vakarian wished to die with her, die for her, blamed himself for leaving her side, wondered why he did not know that leaving her side was the worst choice he had made in his life. He vowed to make better choices. The woman he loved was gone and he accepted he could not go back, could not stand still, must go forward. He embodied war. He embodied her. He honored his Avah."

"There is a human woman bearing the name Lal Shepard who was taken from a family that did not embody war, but embodied peace and knowledge. That peace was violated as blood and bodies were transformed to smoke. She chose to be trained to kill. She chose to embody protection and sacrifice. Every day she hears her parents' voices. She moved forward and not back. She is not a farmer on Mindoir. She expects nobody to restore her childhood to her. She is the only witness to her childhood, to her parents. She lost her ship and her crew and her life on a day like any other. There were no portents or omens, no warnings. No Gods intervened, there was no mercy. Her ship was destroyed, her crew left to pods or vacuum and she sacrificed herself to save her pilot, who would not leave the ship he loved. He would not leave the spot where her last footprint cast a shadow in space."

"Between these two people, Garrus would have preferred to be there with her, to save her even if he died. She no doubt felt blessed by whatever small mercy was available that he was safe on the Citadel. They would argue about these diametrically opposite, mirror-shine truths, no doubt, he wanting to sacrifice himself for her, her grateful her sacrifice did not take him… and if I could take your mother's place, bear the pain she bore, bear the torture, bear the death, that is where I wish my life could have ended. But it did not. What remains is that each person retains in their memory what is not a story but is life, wishes to protect and give their lives for those they love. There is no limit to that, there is no negotiating with that. You cannot talk to us to change that any more than anybody could talk to you and convince you that perhaps you did not love your mother. So when I tell you these truths, line them up in their depth and breadth, their inherent opposition. Do not underestimate their power."

"When I tell you that you are my son and that I owe you, wish to give to you my love, your lung back and my leg, your mother back, your childhood pristine and perfect, parents that had spent their days painting and gardening in the sun with no further cares… to the point that you would be bored by us and wonder why your life was not more exciting… believe me. The Normandy would be exciting, it could be family, it could be adventure, it could be so many things to you, with the people you love and learning from some of the greatest medical minds in existence… I wish to give you that. I feel it is not within my authority to take it from you if you wish to reach out and convince Commander Shepard of your dream. It is your place and your right to be an inspiration, to have aspirations, to hold the best of the future in your hands."

"But that is a story. The reality is that each person on that ship is there not to live an adventure or to be with their family, but to die in the line of duty. We became family after the choice to kill and to die. You are our family but we wish to hold you back from choosing to kill or to die. If we rearrange history it would make a story. We could take those broken days from ourselves and be fully responsible for them. I could have died in your mother's place and that would be just and make the world better. I would not permit, nor would your mother permit that you take her place. Ever. We would both die because that is our job as your parents, to protect you, to care for you, something that I failed to do. I do not wish for you to become me. I did not raise you to kill. I did not raise you to suffer. I did not raise you to trade your soul for the gifts elegant violence brings. I do and did know better and I still do. I am proud of that, that you are you, and are not me. You are not her. You are a man who has made adult choices and here I must ask you to consider Shepard and Garrus, and that day that haunts them both. You convince her to allow you on the Normandy and one day, an ordinary day with no warning, no omen and no mercy, her ship with her family on it is attacked. On that ship are scores of people who volunteered to die in the line of duty, and one young Drell man with promise, love, ambition and intelligence. A young man she loved so dearly she could not tell him no."

"Perhaps she lives. Perhaps she dies because I went to you and not to her. Perhaps her order that I go to you means both you and I die and she ordered that it be so. Perhaps she orders me to find you, protect you and Garrus dies protecting her. Perhaps we all live. What we all know from our personal responsibility for our worst days but you do not, though you wish to be a peer, wish to be family and counted as equal is that your death would bear the highest cost for everyone and the deepest well of regret. Perhaps I live, you do not, and I enter battle sleep and never wake because I traded what I knew was best for you, what was best for me, for adventure and what I owe you. Perhaps I die on my way to you and you live and you regret being there at all. I am certain this would be the perfect time for me to realize love conquers all and if we stay together everything will work… but that is not how the stories of the people concerned go. That is not what I taught you, that is not what I wish to teach you. Love can be conquered. Love must be protected. Death must not be dared by those who do not have clear in their minds that the result of their dare will result in death eventually, once enough dares are sought."

"I made the choice that you might hate me for protecting you, but that did not relieve me of the responsibility of protecting you. I am your father and I am an ice-bladed killer who has brought death to people with promise, love, ambition and intelligence with no omen or mercy. That can somehow be true at the same time that I love you and I want better for you, and I can only prove it by my absence. I cannot change who I am. You do not yet know who you are, you can yet be better. You do not owe that to me, you owe it to yourself. You can prove that you understand by realizing you can learn medicine on Palaven, you can set aside your adventure as an adult, you can make your sacrifice knowingly, know what you lost and what you will miss every day, as I missed your youth. Choose to protect yourself to serve greater good, regardless of the dare and the risk you wish to rise to in order to prove your valor. We do not want your valor. We, in truth, want your continued life above all things. If we die you know that your life, your future, your potential, is what all of us on that ship fight to protect. It is not because you are inexperienced or unwanted, and it was never that. It is because you are of infinite value to those that love you, you have more life ahead of you and the promise of 'better' that you can bear for us. You are our hope. You can choose healing and you can heal from anywhere. We must choose fighting, and we must fight from one place, one extraordinarily dangerous place. I do not know if Palaven will be attacked and you killed, but I do know if that happens, all involved will still know you had the best chance of survival of all of us and stories have brutal endings when those stories are truth. You can make it a chosen cost of being an adult, of learning certain unspeakable truths of being a bond mate, being a Commander, being an assassin, being a father, being a son, without having to die to learn them, without having to die to reinforce the lesson in others. Remain here, Yased. I beg you."

Tears were streaming down both their faces as Yased tilted his head back and closed his eyes "Well, yeah. I've discovered heroes are exhausting and I need to recover."

"And receive therapy."

"Lots and lots of therapy."

"Thank you."

"If you die I'll want to kill you myself."

"I should have just said that. That is the moral of the stories, I believe."

"Please come back. It matters if you say it. If you mean it."

"I want to stay. I want to come back. I always wanted to be there, and to mean it."


	60. Chapter 60

Cara's arrival back on the Normandy was a physical and emotional relief in so many ways. When they'd traveled to Palaven she'd been apprehensive and tattered, guilty she'd pushed Garrus to a breaking point, that Garrus and Senar had both joined forces to express how stubborn and unreasonable she was.

It was nice to see them working together, but against her… or for her… she couldn't decide.

She had fewer secrets at this moment than she'd held since she was 16 years old. She had never wanted to keep the rest so desperately because of the reception of her secrets. She wanted to hold them to her tight, curl into the metaphoric fetal position and protect everything remaining. She had to become accustomed to excruciatingly tender vulnerability after having lived so long with natural camouflage.

Palaven had been immersive and educational. She knew more about Garrus and that was all good. She knew more about Senar and that was a delicate balance of power and privilege. She'd grown closer to Yased and that rubbed raw in the excruciatingly tender and vulnerable way of responsibility that Yased forgave but she could not forgive in herself. She was endlessly grateful and touched that Russ took on Yased's therapy. Cara was not strong enough to support Yased's full weight.

Metaphorically or literally.

She'd certainly learned that Garrus's family was powerful, fiercely loyal and community minded, constant fireworks of events and honors, pageantry in the Vakarian blue that best represented the color of Turian blood.

She had been able to navigate, she had been able to appear cool and calm and… and she really had… not hated… but been averse to every moment of it, Garrus understanding that and protecting her from it by abbreviating their appearances, speaking for them both, navigating for her. He was so good at it. He was extraordinary. She was so proud.

And she never wanted to go through that again.

She wasn't intimidated, she wasn't incompetent, she understood it. She degraded in that environment emotionally and intellectually in the same way she would degrade physically if she stepped outside and took full radiation damage. Bravery or repeated exposure would not result in anything other than more damage taken. It would not result in learning how to tolerate or overcome it. She'd only be forced into lying that it didn't hurt and hope she could keep the damage to herself.

She had no idea how to change her scent though, and lying to Garrus had never been easy or effective except in a short-term sense. Fortunately he knew her well enough to know even before they got there that there was no chance she'd live… or he'd let her live… on Palaven.

The sense of Turian ego and self-aggrandizement set her on edge. Her hyper vigilance was in overdrive, aware of every pair of eyes, trying to parse every word, every expression.

The problem wasn't that she couldn't parse those words or expressions, the problem was that she did understand the slights, subtext and the obsequious appeals to power that demanded something from Garrus and her in every moment and all future moments. She was simultaneously impatient with the fussing and waste of time spent on the hammering message of 'We're Number One!' that was a large percentage of all Turian interactions and wary of all the opportunities and angles that were available to strike. Her short red head seemed to be a conspicuously out of place and easy-to-hit center of a bull's eye.

Standing next to Garrus in the context of his family, she didn't think about war, she thought about who they could be after the war. If they stayed here, they'd be at war forever. She needed it to end.

In theory she was a person that could be plugged into all circumstances and have her adapt to them. She could. She did. But because it was for Garrus, because it was personal, it dragged at her like quicksand she was harming by trying to escape. She had no intention of allowing the slights, subtext or future needs pull her off course. She had to jettison them as quickly as possible, get back to who she needed to be, return to self-directed space that correctly assessed self worth, resources, intent and capability without pumping them up with rhetoric.

She honored the Turian people. She did. She disagreed with them often and could barely co-exist in their aggressively presented space, but she needed them. That created guilt. She was caught between waves of impatience and then trying to counter that by looking around the room and wondering how many of the Turians vowing honor and death in every gesture would in fact be dead soon.

She wished all of these people spent more time doing… real work… instead of discussing the traditional aura of perfection that was the Turian ideal or trying to make her out to be some bulletproof and impervious Spirit of War.

Maybe the guilt also meant that she'd condemned Garrus to this instead of a life together, and all the times he'd asked to be able to go with her…

More guilt. Much more guilt.

Then she'd remember how very good he was at it, what a huge difference he'd made and…

Yes, it all led to guilt. Much more guilt.

She was a small human woman with a gift for strategy and stubborn and she had to bite the inside of her lip so often to stop from saying it, to correct someone's overblown impression of her talents, to smile and nod and agree that the Walls Listened and her victory was fated.

It would be easy if the Alliance had sent her in for a diplomatic mission. That she could manage. She'd be professional. She'd be paid. She'd have a mission and a purpose. She could lie and be camouflaged and feel absolutely no guilt about that.

Here the purpose was personal, and she was good at it, but she didn't like that she left gatherings with Garrus physically and emotionally propping her up.

She could not live a life surrounded by Turians. There was no place for solitude, and in Turian culture seeking solitude seemed to be something bordering on mental illness requiring community intervention. She couldn't step outside for a walk without volunteer companions. She would end up a default prisoner in one set of rooms the same way she ended up isolated in her cabin on the Normandy.

She really wanted to get work done and had felt she'd wasted enough time. She knew it wasn't a waste, Garrus leveraged every moment between parsing her for her exhaustion, but it was impossible to accommodate her style amid the Madlis walls that listened and judged, the Madlis citizens that listened and judged, and above all her brain listening and judging and not liking what she saw or heard, wanting to bolt to her virce hole every moment.

Aware she couldn't live in her hole anymore, aware Garrus would never be able to meet her there.

That she couldn't meet him in the center of his Madlis.

She was exhausted and longing for the days where they found a place, someplace, anyplace where they could coexist without losing pieces of themselves to psychic self-surgery in order to fit.

For the moment it felt clean to draw clear boundaries, have a cabin where she could center and think, where she belonged to herself and was not incrementally dissected for what parts belonged to the Hierarchy. She was too tired to count all the good things that partnership, bond and an ability to communicate with others had brought her. Right now she wanted solitude and the clean lines of Geth thought, her mind able to embrace strategy again with clarity.

She didn't talk to the denizens of her cabin. She felt compressed and wanting to keep her thoughts to herself. She trusted EDI, she trusted Garrus, she trusted Senar, she really did. She felt exposed and here she could not tell if she felt she'd made a strategic mistake already or was about to, or if she hadn't and she was only experiencing culture shock and unaccustomed social pressures that translated into frustration and anxiety mimicking the signals she'd experience if she felt she had made or was about to make a mistake.

She needed to sort it all out, having spent a life where social pressures were all part of the same game and she slid through them not without injury, but without exposed weakness.

Mostly.

Garrus saw through her.

Senar saw through her.

She had never been as good as she thought she was.

She needed to be better.

Picnic, Sooth and Senar would arrive and although the picnic idea was in fact ridiculous, she was so squeezed empty of the ridiculous that she needed an influx of silly to counter the fact that they were discussing the extermination of sentient life with a synthetic life form that…

That what?

She was having trouble categorizing.

She didn't want to think ill of Sooth but of course there was so much to worry about. Any trick she might have to parse psychological intent in a sentient creature was gone. All her instincts regarding behavior were missing because Geth had no micro-expressions or vocal cues that could be counted upon.

Sooth did not glow.

That was not much of a concern, nobody at the moment glowed except for Garrus and Senar, they persisted in glowing, and otherwise all she knew was that some parts of Sooth… glowed. Parts of what she said glowed. That internal vibration of a path. Sooth was important, the way forward was with her.

Russ did not glow. Yased did not glow.

She wanted to move forward, having discovered that forcibly resting on laurels and having more heaped upon her at every moment made her edgy and miserable.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Russ helped Yased out with his therapy, grateful for the opportunity. Yased was a great kid and to be doing something helpful and clean for a young man who spent a lot of time being angry at his family and experiencing loss helped Russ feel he'd definitely arrived at authoritative adulthood with the ability to give something back. He had his paint, he had his family, Yased was part of it, they had enough in common that it was all around therapeutic.

Senar was often present but today was conspicuous in a subtle way. The man usually wasn't seen if he didn't want to be seen but today he wanted Russ's attention.

Oh boy.

Russ stuck around until he and Senar were given an opportunity at privacy.

One more thing Senar didn't want to say within EDI's earshot, no doubt. Senar began with "I wished to thank you for your assistance with Yased. His therapy has gone well."

"He's a great kid. He could beat us both at that foot race right about now."

"He will remain here."

"That's good news." There was a pause and Russ said "Every time you come talk to me, it is bad news, so don't keep me in suspense."

Senar's mouth twisted into what looked like a self-deprecating smile "I have never been an emissary for good news, I am afraid. The pattern will hold true. As we will be serving on the same squad, I wished to share a concern with you. I have not told Garrus, I have not told Lal, I believe when I tell you why you will understand. If you wish to tell Garrus, I understand. I hope that you do not. As before, my concern is squad cohesion and mission completion. Lal Shepard is an extraordinary tactician. She has one flaw in her choices that does not, will not change with repetition."

Russ snorted and said "She's crazy?"

Senar shook his head "Not necessarily a drawback."

Russ nodded as though that made sense and guessed again "Oh! I know. She's a fucking martyr."

Senar nodded and said "Yes. Garrus knows this and seeks to keep her alive. This is not news to him, it dominates his thoughts and fears. He does not fear that I will kill her, only that I will take her. There is likely nothing I can do to relieve that fear in him if my actions thus far have not. Had I wished to take her I would have done so. I believe he thinks I will become more desperate and devoted and I will reach the point where I will break and take her. I cannot relieve that fear through words, only through my actions. It is a natural response of a bond mate and one I do not necessarily wish to relieve if it results in him protecting her. Unfortunately the more harmless I appear the less likely he would be to believe that is my intention. I do not believe speaking to her of it will change her nature, but it might make her wary of our obedience. Speaking to Garrus about this would not change his behavior in battle, but might make him feel guilty or change his behavior as her bond mate in such a way that she becomes suspicious and perhaps paranoid, which I wish to spare her. Martyrdom is one of her strengths in that she is not afraid to die, but as always a strength can become a weakness under the wrong circumstances, and we encounter the wrong circumstances with tedious regularity. She is extraordinary at game play but she can lose sight of one tenet of any game that is being played. She can pursue her goal relentlessly. She can formulate and execute plans to press forward. When it comes to the end game or a choice where she has only seconds to decide, her flaw comes into sharp relief. In human chess one wins the game by taking the King. In Drell Pon-Ifa one wins the game by taking the Doyenne. Every game has a goal. The only game Commander Shepard loses, and has lost repeatedly is when she is the target, when she is the goal. When she is on the board as the piece. She lost her life to Collectors, Garrus took bond without consent and she abided by and defended his choice, she lost certain aspects of her will and autonomy to Garrus or to me when we pressed upon her to do so. She will sacrifice herself given a choice to make, and that is more likely if the choice must be made in a brief amount of time. Unfortunately for the greater galaxy… a King or a Doyenne cannot afford to think that way. When they are lost, the game is lost."

Russ jutted his jaw and said "If you think I'd let her die because I want Garrus…"

Senar shook his head "No, I do not. You and I have some things in common and I wish to point out and reinforce the positive we can contribute as supporting pieces. You can perhaps believe me where Garrus would not because you have been forced in some ways into the same position. You would die for Garrus, therefore you would die for her. You would extend his will, and his will belongs to her as his Avah. I would die for Lal. Believe it or not, I would also die for you, I would also die for Garrus. Commander Lal Shepard, Councilor Garrus Vakarian, Spectre Hemorus Vakarian mean more to the galaxy at large than Spectre Senar Tuelon. I am a valuable piece but less valuable than all others in the proposed squad of four. I do not deny that I want Lal, but I owe Garrus my son's life. I do wish to defeat Reapers to permit Yased's continued life in safety in the Clan that honors him. I cannot take her. I cannot kill Garrus or allow Garrus to die. I must see the mission through to the end, I must see her will to the end or I lose any sense of Rightness I am attempting to attain. Beyond metaphoric gain or loss, the literal loss would be Yased's life and potential future. I do not believe that anybody has cause to doubt that I want him to survive and thrive. I cannot risk that by subverting her mission. If I take her for myself, I lose my son. If I take her for myself I lose her in every sense that has meaning. I am not interested in Commander Lal Shepard's contempt or the failure of her mission. Beyond Yased being honored by his new family, I do have one goal that everyone will believe I am motivated to reach: Keep her alive at all costs. Whether or not you believe me, you can uniquely see why what I want in an extended relationship with her may not be attainable, but what I already have is worthy of preservation. You are Garrus's best friend and confidante, an exception to many rules and expectations, and regardless of whether or not you or Garrus could be bond mates in some ideal world, what you have is real. Your self respect, Spectre status, fresh Vakarian paint and family are not things you would risk. I am Lal Shepard's closest confidante and partner in formulating strategy, she trusts me, she needs me. I contribute to her mission and she and Garrus have legitimized my name, given me my life and my son the safest haven in the storm as can be arranged. I would not risk that. My training was as an assassin, not as a thief, and I will use my training to keep her alive. You and I can never be the cause of their deaths through omission or commission or we would always have to live with the suspicion that we allowed their deaths for personal and selfish reasons. You and I must be above and beyond reproach or we lose not only what fantasies we harbor, but what real benefits we already experience. Lal Shepard cannot sacrifice herself. I am certain Garrus would not allow it and needs no convincing to behave in a way that is in his nature and is his right as bond mate. I am certain I would not allow her to sacrifice herself. I wish to be certain you will not allow it, not only for your own reasons, but to protect the one blind spot she possesses that we must compensate for individually and as a team."

"You want me to mutiny against Commander Shepard?"

"Yes. In this case I wish for it to appear to be less in the way of coordinated mutiny and more in the way of choices made in a moment, not premeditated, but instinctual. Choices made as hers are made, on the ground in the face of changing circumstance and stress. Situational mutiny that can be defended in every case as good strategic intent in service of the further goal of the war, being well aware our Commander is a necessary asset to defend. In moments of choice she sees herself as a pawn, worthy of sacrifice. We must remind her of her value. We must see it for her. If she appears to do as history teaches us she inevitably does, I wish to be certain all three of those she relies upon most… will… be willing to sacrifice themselves in her place or rescue her from whatever impulse of martyrdom resulted in her exchanging her life for her pilot's life. She is prone. We must be aware. We must have solidarity but appear to have come to the conclusion each on our own. We must not present any intent of conspiracy or mutiny, but prevent her death in each and every situation that may arise that she feels demands it."

"And if I get booted off the squad?"

"She will bring me and Garrus with her by default, each in our own ways having earned or demanded it of her. I will attempt to influence her as much as possible to include you on missions, to advocate for you if necessary, but I do not believe that it will be necessary based upon her past treatment of you and the purpose you serve. She will bring you because she wants you to watch over Garrus, as you always have. You relieve her of the need to care for Garrus and free her to concern herself with her mission. Any concern that I might kill him or take her is mitigated for both of them by your presence. Ideally in a squad composed of the four of us, her eyes are on the mission and internal dynamics of the squad are maintained by three balancing presences. On the surface there is a reinforcing symmetry of self interest – Shepard watches out for the mission, Garrus watches out for her, you watch out for Garrus, I watch out for her execution of mission strategy for flaws. That is how she will see it. I wish to permit her to believe we are watching each other, but in truth, I wish for us all to be watching her, executing mission where necessary and unburdened by mistrust in each other's motives. You are an indispensible element of what she needs – protection for her bond mate and unmatched biotic and physical strength. You can disagree with her and have done so without damaging your professional relationship in ways that Garrus or I cannot because it would be interpreted as personal and not professional. It is most likely that if you save her life, she will not remove you from the squad if you justify your actions. I can help with that. Above all, do not doubt what you do. Never apologize. Save her. Feel free to be angry, to physically intimidate her in the moment. Not with violence, but with the force of your concern for the mission and her survival being key to its success. I will support you and attempt to convince her as well, as I am sure, will Garrus. She will find it difficult to justify suicidal actions with three of us denying her that avenue. Given time and distance from the mutiny she will have a tendency to reassert her martyrdom in a different direction. She is likely to insist that her action was the only way to accomplish a goal, and I would suggest some version of "You are Commander Shepard, you will find another way" to counter her immediate insistence upon her denied path. It is possible we get taken off the squad one by one for insubordination… but that means that each of us has kept her from doing something where she sacrifices herself… three times. We must all reinforce that her authority is paramount… until or unless that authority results in her death. Wherever possible, we must all block that intent and discover reasons why we were right."

"Three times. Saving Cerberus 12 billion credits?"

"Exactly and only three times, unless we can leverage those instances into making her realize she has a team that has their own value and their own judgment. Garrus is a Councilor and you and I are Spectres, she must deal with us differently than she would direct subordinates. With all three of us supporting your action, it is very likely she would forgive and understand and perhaps begin to compensate for her rash choices. If not, there is little to be done. There are no others that would countermand her orders. There are also no others that can carry out her orders as well. She would have to abandon a bond mate and two Spectres who know her well and have a track record of unquestioned obedience and success when her orders do not involve her death in favor of other squad mates with less experience and lessened confidence on her part. It is likely she would not choose to do that. Her martyrdom cuts both ways for her. She would not allow herself to choose less capable squad mates, compromising the mission she treasures. It is a near impossibility with Garrus on the ship that she would remove him from the squad. If she brings Garrus she would wish to bring you to protect him. I wish to remove any hesitation from your actions and grant authority to any choice that may appear to be mutiny but is in fact an interventional rescue of the most important asset in the war. It may never happen that the opportunity arises, but if it does, you are not alone and you need not fear my intervention, can count upon my support. I do not wish for you to see me as an obstacle to your goals or believe that I plot Garrus's death. Here we share mutual self interest, supporting the mission and the Commander, except in those instances where the Commander becomes the mission."

"Squad cohesion, huh?"

"Squad cohesion that hopefully results in defeating our enemies and retaining and protecting our loved ones. Perhaps not at our sides, but if that is not what fate allows, then we keep them alive and together and we console ourselves that we are in fact good people who will preserve life, two particular lives at all costs to ourselves. I prioritize Lal for excellent reasons, but I would give my life for Garrus as well, and for you. I wish for you to have faith in that."

Russ smiled "Yeah, it might work for me to be able to call her on some of her crazy bullshit."

Senar smiled in return "She must look forward and not back. Her attention must not be upon us but upon her goal, and we must protect her."

"All right. This could just be you setting me up to die or get booted off the squad."

"Of course it could. The only consolation being if I wished you dead or gone, both of those things I can or could have done on my own without your assistance or permission."

"You guys give me a headache."

"My apologies. Perhaps consider that Garrus would be forever grateful to you for saving her life."

"That part doesn't suck except where it obviously does."

"Spectres must make difficult choices."

"No shit. Spirits, you can have her, you deserve each other."

"That is the hope."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Senar took a carefully packed basket and a shuttle to the Normandy, relieved to be back on the ship. It was a rarefied privilege.

Cara and Sooth were already arranged on a blanket on the floor, seemingly not having been there for long. Cara waved at him and returned to unpacking a basket that looked thematically mechanical. Sooth was trying to sit awkwardly with Quarian-shaped legs on the bright teal blanket.

Cara was unpacking… batteries?

Charging stations and batteries.

Cara said "Senar and I have food, so I was wondering… didn't seem fair for you to not have anything. So I brought these. Does charging from different sources… make any difference in personal sensation?"

Sooth's hood plates wavered and Senar believed the answer was not going to be no regardless of Sooth's experience of… recharging.

Cara set the recharging stations ceremoniously out on plates in front of the Geth like a place setting. "I brought NiCd, Lithium ion and mass effect stations. Just in case. Wait, will you recharge in… public? Is that a Geth thing? Am I being insensitive?"

More wavering of the plates and Senar was fascinated, sitting down and carefully opening the basket, which contained Carousel for a visit, helpfully pre-envenomed so she would not yowl through the shuttle ride. Senar leaned in, collected a happy squeak and kiss to the frill as he transferred the boneless cat to Cara's lap. He watched fascinated as Sooth sorted through what was expected and produced a coiled extension to plug into the stations. After a squeal and Carousel being put back in his lap, Cara went searching for adapters she'd found 'just in case' and Sooth looked at him as though Senar would be able to explain what was going on. Senar smiled at clear Geth panic. Senar whispered "She will be happy with whatever you decide. Do not worry."

Cara came back, scooped Carousel back up, set a handful of adapters like utensils on the sides of the plates and Sooth plugged herself dutifully into the first battery.

Cara said "What do you think, anything?"

Sooth said "That is good."

"Try the other ones!"

Sooth's plates wavered and she looked briefly again at Senar, who nodded, poured silifeh juice for himself and for Cara, who spared him a grateful grin. He was thoroughly happy with his immediate life choices.

Yes, there would be wonderful uses for the teal blanket in fantasy, but for now, an envenomed cat, a giggling Cara and Sooth slowly plugging and unplugging herself from different battery sources at the rate that Cara switched from tart to cookie to juice… and saying a thoroughly confused "Mmmm…" was more than enough.

Senar found himself smiling and relaxed, Cara after the few minutes of eating saying enthusiastically "Okay! So what do we do? I can't wait to find out what we're going to do!" Cara reached up a hand to Sooth, who met that hand with hers and said "High 128."


	61. Chapter 61

Silliness dispensed with (mostly) and Carousel on her lap in a boneless fuzzy purring puddle, Cara focused on seriously pulling together the next step, the next mission, anticipation fizzing in her mind and blood.

They began with the tracking data of physical Geth platforms and materiel, which was absolutely disturbing in its scope. They'd come across a lot of Geth, but the number of Geth that existed… rivaled the cumulative population of sentient space faring species.

That was instantly sobering, and to be shown this by a Geth… a prickle of sweat along Cara's spine and a straight face as she suppressed a spurt of panic. She covered by transferring Carousel, sleeping, to a nearby chair.

Cara called up a map of Council races, their systems, their trade routes, their colonies… she correlated it with Sooth's galaxy map.

Inverse completion of the usable space. Sentient life took up the spaces that were conducive to life and Geth… seemingly could live… live? Work… anywhere… and did. Very close to organic life and… occasionally seemingly simultaneously.

Cara pointed to a few spots where the colors blended, yellow for organic and blue for Geth, vivid spots of green. "How is this possible? They'd be on top of each other?"

Sooth said quietly "They are. Geth function underground in many circumstances."

Cara was shocked into a true moment of internal terror. She said with toneless caution "What did you get from analyzing this information?"

Other than the fact Geth could wipe us all out on their own…

Sooth said "The creation of heretics is accelerating."

"You can tell that how?"

"Units are tracked but cease being trackable."

"How?"

"Introduction of Reaper code will detect and delete the reporting capacity that allowed us to gather this information."

"Is it originating from a place? A node?"

"Yes. Places. Nodes."

"Couldn't that just be the individual units going offline?"

"They would be decommissioned for repair or storage and assigned a correlating code, but these cease reporting at all."

"You've been tracking this, have data for how long?"

"Two months."

"Show me time lapse." She dimmed the organic input, keeping that only as a marker of where Geth were close but unseen. Her eyes darted at the fireworks of information, the chaotic blur. She said again, tonelessly "So mostly… what we're seeing are the peaceful Geth? The ones that continue to report?"

Sooth responded "Yes. The numbers are diminishing."

That was obvious from the data. In some places the movement looked like it correlated to action akin to breathing. Units travel to, units travel from. So that was theoretically normal? Fireworks that maintained stable patterns, defined the spokes and wheels and blooms of the virtual and extensive Silk Road of the Geth. She confirmed with Sooth that this was likely and then eliminated instances of that pattern from the display. Thankfully the green disappeared. Sooth clarified "Surveillance and preparation against potential aggression. No active aggression."

She'd better make sure that did not change.

She looked for gaps, for holes in the data. Unrepeated patterns. Attrition spots. She imagined the implied third map of more malignant fireworks she could not track. She watched, thinking and talking absently as ideas struck her.

"Highlight Quarian presence, add back in theoretically routine Geth activity nearby."

Correlation and no blank spots. Geth were observing. Cara said "Why isn't there a higher concentration around Rannoch?"

Sooth continued "Conflict with Quarians is minimal and predicated upon Quarians pushing into Geth territory."

"Quarians aren't pushing… so no fighting."

"Affirmative."

"So we have equilibrium, observation and preparation, comparable firepower intended for proportional response, not accumulation?"

"Affirmative."

So once again Games Theory. Geth moves are predicated upon hostile incursion. Otherwise essentially peaceful. Quietly, insidiously peaceful.

Theoretically.

"Okay. Reset. Eliminate Council races, sentient races with mass effect capability." The result looked like ambient noise, whatever pattern was there was tickling at her but not announcing itself. There had to be something. She stared and said "Loop it please. Slow time of simulation to half."

Too many blank spots. "Correlate absence of Geth with physical obstacles – black holes, stars, etcetera. Mark as red."

Blooms of irregular red marked hazards and defined the pattern of avoidance. Getting somewhere. She focused on the hypnotic, slowly playing pattern of Geth movement, Geth attrition and… and the places, the nodes with the most attrition centered around an area where Geth moved, materiel moved, and Geth did not move out, materiel did not move out. It took shape over time like a rock thrown and ripples moving out, subtle but persistent. Looking around the map she could see the pattern repeat, but it was largest in one spot, took up the most time, took up the most materiel and garnered the most theoretically heretical Geth. At the height of the rough irregular and expanding sphere of reporting silence, which correlated to the end of the loop she said "Pause." She looked at the pattern, shifted her perspective to the 3D nature of it, felt the tickle turn into a scratching at her curiosity and a further shake of answering terror. She said quietly "What's there?"

Sooth said "No data."

"Okay. Give me numbers. I can see attrition but I don't have a handle on the scale. Geth that have gone into that space and ceased reporting in this time frame?"

"472,119. Correction. 125. 147."

"Tons of materiel that have disappeared into that space?"

"982,014. Correction. 047. 092."

"Thank you. No need to calculate further. Any other spot on the map that has greater capacity of heretics or materiel?"

"Several smaller foci but this is the largest."

She said slowly "So not observation. Not correlation. Not preparation for standard conflict or preparation for reciprocal response. They're building something. Ideas?"

"No data."

"Can you track an individual Geth sent that way?"

"Geth conversion to heretic 100% beyond that event horizon."

"So we need eyes on."

"We do not have eyes."

"Figure of speech. We need a physical craft to observe. Has there been any sentient traffic into that location?"

"No data."

"Active mass relay near?"

"Affirmative. Not in this system, but two systems over."

"Okay. So it's accessible but… remote. We know… that we don't know. Will stealth tech work there?"

"No data."

Several tiered layers of if-then suggested panic sheared off her internally like a glacier giving way into the ocean with a shiver that reflected the ice-blue cold shudder of that physical phenomena. Cara held still as that sensation sent out seismic waves and the distortion of thought nearly took over. She froze. She couldn't afford to express it. She said again tonelessly "Okay. Thank you, Sooth. That was incredibly helpful. I can't tell you how much. Please, keep monitoring. I need to think, and that means I need this floor to pace."

Was that too cold? Sooth often stayed for hours and Cara needed to be pressured to let her go. She couldn't afford that right now. She lost her toneless voice and said almost sheepishly with an embarrassed, lovesick smile "Garrus… visiting soon."

Sooth stood and said "Acknowledged." Hurt feelings? Cara couldn't tell. Hurt feelings she could manage… suspicion? Right now she had to think and she couldn't do it in front of Sooth.

Cara smiled and said brightly "You want to take the stations with you? My treat!"

Sooth awkwardly reached down and gathered them, Cara thrusting the thematically mechanical basket at her enthusiastically.

Do not panic in front of the Geth.

Senar thankfully assisted in the bustling enthusiasm of packing up, smoothly adding his own conversation of pleasantry and welcome that Cara barely heard, a buzzing in her ears and her brain that persisted until Sooth was about to leave toting her consolation prize. It was panic that made Cara hug her enthusiastically. "Sorry this was so short. Later?"

"Affirmative."

No high anything. Cara couldn't manage.

Sooth gone, Senar swept away the blanket. Cara began to pace, brows drawn together. She began to chew on the side of her thumb.

Senar said quietly "If there is Reaper intelligence backing the Geth activity, if they can spread their influence that far, the Reapers do not need to invade. The Geth can kill us all."

"I know."

"That was incomplete information. Based on reporting blackout, the numbers could be much higher."

"I know."

"They may not be building anything other than many more Geth."

"That would do it."

"Sooth… is potentially in danger or potentially is danger."

"I know. She can't leave the Normandy. I can't stand this. I had no idea there were that many. I thought there were… a thousandth of the number of Geth that we saw. That being the case, what she wanted would just be a… tribal readjustment that wouldn't matter other than to their internal politics and beliefs… this…"

"If there is a 100% attrition rate beyond certain boundaries, Sooth would be captured, interrogated and reprogrammed."

"I know. And we'd be killed. Half a million Geth."

"In the last two months."

"No data."

"Lasam, I know how much you love Sooth…"

"I can't stand it."

"You must."

"They must know she's been tracking them."

"The act of observation itself has had consequences."

"They're not yet to the point where they can manipulate the data entirely or they'd create the same pattern as elsewhere in order to look normal."

"You hope."

"It was already happening when she started…"

"You believe. It could be a trap."

"It is definitely a trap."

"It could be much more of an intentional trap than you believe, Lasam."

"She wouldn't do that."

"She may not know she is doing it."

"I can't stand that idea. We wouldn't know any of this without her." She thought… Sooth doesn't glow. Sooth doesn't glow and I can't tell Senar… no place for instinct… I need information. I can't rely on my information. I can't rely on…

Senar continued with reason that aligned with her panic again "And if it is a trap, that would be best. To not know."

She knew this, she did. She could feel it, she could not stand the shape of this and was in denial that would soon fade as this collapsed in on her, but having him here was clarifying. She responded, even though she knew the answer… she needed to see both sides, he knew that. He would provide that. "They wouldn't waste half a million Geth and that tonnage on a trap. They're building something."

"Or faking the information."

"On the slight hope we'd find the pattern?"

"On the absolute reality that Sooth could lead you to find it if you did not find it on your own. It is not as though your ability to analyze data is an unknown factor. You have said yourself that Geth think mathematically, what would be more likely as a trap than that they present you with mathematical information to analyze?"

She could not remember whose idea it was to monitor… hers? Sooth's? Either way it was an obvious first recon step, predictable. The shape of his suspicion matched the panicked shearing of her internal landscape. She took a deep breath. She said "Sooth appears to be an independent, unique AI that delivered to me the request that 'heretics' be reprogrammed to save her… people? People."

"Sooth could be an example of Reaper capability, granting consciousness and guile, whose request would deliver you to a set place and time in order to complete her true mission."

"So they would not want to kill me, they'd want to capture me. Sooth could have killed me at any point."

"Yes."

"Why capture me?"

"You cannot imagine any reasons for that?"

"Not this elaborately. There are easier ways. If Reaper technology can create someone like Sooth, you don't need me."

"They kept Protheans as genetically re-engineered slaves, Lasam, for 50,000 years. You as a servant of the Reapers would be of as much value to them as you being a servant to the sentient creatures is to us. Perhaps your capture would not be known. You could be uniquely indoctrinated and lead sentient creatures into servitude with your strategic brilliance."

"I can't stand this."

"Consider. Sooth is a unique individual, evolving before the Reapers began to infiltrate this cycle."

"Are we sure that happens? What if there's a constant Reaper presence?"

"Stipulated. Still more likely a random and unpredictable event, such as your birth. Reaper presence does not control or predict everything. Once unique individuals are identified, they become high value indoctrination targets. Sooth's creation may have been as unpredictable as your birth."

"We've eliminated sentient indoctrination."

"Limited. Not eliminated. Unless they have a new method, those in public life are scanned."

She repeated slowly "The act of observation… changed the pattern."

"Reapers can no longer focus on subverting organic life."

"And Sovereign…"

"Focused upon Geth."

"Higher value targets are now of synthetic origin."

"EDI for one, who was targeted by Harbinger. She was given the opportunity to survive and not serve the sentient."

"So how do I keep Sooth from learning about this, keep Sooth from all ground activity… and not… alter the pattern? Cause her to observe and change her pattern?"

"That I do not know, Lasam. Consider that each individual upon this ship is of high value. Hijacking is preferred, but conquest is the ultimate goal so death is also acceptable. A death to anybody on this ship is a strike to morale, a strike to organics."

"So the Reapers in each cycle use the available terrain as well as indoctrinated weapons as well as weapons of opportunity. Their strategy is to turn sentient creatures against their obviously and more subtly indoctrinated brethren."

"It is entirely possible, Lasam, that your presence and influence over events has changed their tactics, forced them to adapt. You made it possible to reveal Reaper presence years before they intended an invasion, made it possible to reveal the mechanics of indoctrination, made it impossible for them to infiltrate sentient social or military infrastructure to a large degree. They obliterate evidence of their prior existence to avoid preparation against them."

"And so… they focused on Geth. Instead of an indoctrinated sentient force… there's an overwhelming Geth force, with a 100% attrition rate that is instantaneous and responsive to disseminated programming immediately. So those blank data holes… regardless of what is inside them… trap or true…"

"Will expand and engulf the sentient."

"We have to… have to find out what's there." She didn't want to say it, the panic extending to far more than just this cycle. If synthetic life took over that overwhelmingly… sentient life would never again make it past the virce stage, the cat stage, the hamster stage. Systemically eradicated. Stick to now. Now is bad enough.

"Anything or anyone you send could be immediately killed or taken prisoner."

"Will stealth technology work?"

"They know it exists."

"Mechanical probe?"

"Likely repurposed, data faulty or planted."

"Sooth can't go."

"Sooth is either an enemy combatant, a knowing or unknowing spy or a potential source of information to the enemy that would be invaluable as an asset if turned."

"And we would need to know Geth coding… in order to confirm Sooth's attempt to repurpose the heretics."

"Are you fluent in such?"

"Everything I've learned from her is useless if she is a spy. Fruit of the potentially poisoned tree, knowing or unknowing."

"And we have no other source of code, nor can we explain why we cannot rely upon her code."

"I can't execute her mission."

"You could attempt to explain that to her."

"And prove myself unworthy of trust. If she is being honest, that is all she wants. If she sees me probing at Geth borders, not including her, not trusting to her code and not carrying out her mission…"

Senar was silent.

She continued slowly, directed at him, meeting his eyes "If I had let Yased die when you asked me to help… it was all you wanted…"

He did not need to answer that.

Nerveless and numb legs gave out and she fell to her knees. She'd thought she was helping. She'd really thought she was helping. Instead she'd waited… for months… while she was happily learning a new language and dance lack-of-steps in the Madlis…

She'd ignored what she'd partially created.

It had been right there. They'd been right there.

She wanted to reach out to her mother, to her father in this moment of realization and panic so much like the spiraling realization over Alchera. She couldn't tell them, couldn't ask them…

I was so proud of myself… I have a few ships… and I saved some people…

And they're all going to die to Geth.

Her parents weren't there, but Senar was, his arms lifting her and the sharp pain in her knees forgotten to rising nausea, his arms barely felt as the spiraling sharp cold of all that panic, the edges of the glacier and iceberg gave way on the surface to the colder, unmeasured weight of the inexorable reality of not what fell away, but what remained, gleaming and impenetrable, moving closer every moment.

She said, blank-shocked and turning in on herself "I don't know what to do. I don't know if I can do… anything… without making it worse. I don't know how to respond without feeding more assets to this monster so it spits out turned pieces."

Senar didn't answer, his inability to respond, to formulate, to even comfort her in her numbed and blank state a reflection of what she'd just said.

He had no idea either.

Nobody to blame but herself. She'd created this problem.

She was the problem. She had been the problem all along.


	62. Chapter 62

Senar held onto Cara, her heart beating too fast and her breath panting, taken over by too much at once.

He had the strength of his arms to offer but no words, kept her only from the floor, could say nothing that he knew she would not immediately argue with as facile or falsely comforting.

Who was he if not facile or falsely comforting?

There was a surge of dark conviction of having nothing clean to bring to the table, all offerings potentially poisoned.

True to pattern, in which he had faith, before Shepard's smile came her thought, her pacing, her dull-thrown stare that took in nothing other than identifying her place in space, a way to stand upright and provide enough balance to pace. He knew instinctively the first thing she would want to do would be… to stand upright. When her heart calmed and her panting settled, he gently put her back on her feet.

She began to pace again. She said quietly "All right, so I'm responsible for awful things. Moving on."

He did not believe for a moment that she was moving on, a part of her would always be trapped in this moment, unable to be pulled away.

Part of him would be trapped in this moment, the memory pressed deep, hard and painful, the fabric of smooth time pierced and torn.

Drala'tem.

He was jarringly comforted that they shared the moment between them.

He remained silent, sat to the side as unobtrusively as possible as she moved, kinetic expression of her willingness to solve the problem.

She activated her Omni Tool.

"Tali?"

"Lal! Wonderful to see you! So sorry I could not make it to Palaven to visit."

"Me too, wish I could see you."

"You sound distracted. Business call?"

"Oh yeah. You know, doom and destruction and such."

"Of course, there's always doom and destruction."

"You're the only Geth expert I know."

"Well, you made that possible."

"Grateful for that. Do you have any knowledge of Geth coding? You're the only person I know that successfully extracted information from a Geth. That was years ago and you were on your Pilgrimage, and if anybody's made some advancement in the field…"

"Well… yes. You're right. I started out with hacking, with what you gave me… there's a lot I can do. I've been working more on indoctrination…"

"Good news is, we might have organic indoctrination whipped. Bad news is… Geth are being reprogrammed by Reapers. Need to tell you because there are potentially two factions of Geth – neutral until provoked, and those preparing for war. Lots and lots of them, Tali. Scary lots of them. I'll say something for Quarian design… you guys built something that lasts."

"So what do you need from me?"

"I think I have a Geth I need for you to meet."

"A what?"

"Not a what, a who. She has been teaching me coding… I want you to verify. Maybe between the two of you… what I desperately need right now is the two parts of the tenet 'trust but verify.' I trust this Geth. She's an invaluable resource and she might hold the key to reprogramming Reaper-hijacked Geth. I need you to be the source of 'verify' because I'm too close to her. If… we can verify her code, if we can run tests on individual Geth to see what happens… I can't take her on faith. You're my best source for understanding. I also want you to think about… probing into Geth space. Hostile Geth space. What would work, what we could use. I need everything from stealth to blitz. Sending in millions of tiny probes, sending in a Geth that's resistant to hijacking but can behave like they are hijacked, something that could be eyes and ears. I need to know what Geth are doing and this isn't my area. I need your help making it my area."

"You said you… trust… her? She's… been teaching you code?"

"Yes."

"Can I meet her?"

"Headed your way. Please authorize with the Flotilla. I'll bring her to you."

Tali raised a hand "Keep her… on your ship. I'll come over to you when you get here. I don't want to explain the security clearances."

"You got it."

Cara cut off contact, then called Garrus "Hey, honey. Emergency. Leaving in two hours."

Garrus blinked "Of course we are."

"If you're on the ship you're going with me."

"Cute. You're a funny woman."

"See you soon."

"Good thing I pack light."

"Tell Russ."

"On it."

Cara alerted EDI and recalled all personnel. She paced again, called Liara to ask for everything on the Geth.

Then she called Sooth back up to her quarters. Brow ridge raised Senar said "Do you think that wise, Lasam?"

"No."

"Then why do it?"

She smiled at him and he felt better… and much worse simultaneously.

"Because the only way we can win is if Sooth is telling the truth… or can lead us to it. Alienate her and I lose that potential either way."

"Rather like alienating a Drell assassin."

"In theory, yes."

"If it is of any value, I seem to be unwilling to be alienated."

"Which gives me hope. My knees thank you."

"My arms thank you."

She paced further until Sooth arrived. Cara gave her a hug and ushered her in to sit. Cara began pacing again and said "Your information was enlightening in several ways, upsetting in several ways and I'm trying to sort through it. I'd like to sort through it together. The purpose of me asking you to leave was to be able to process some of the data for myself, but I find that being alone will not be helpful in this case. I run the risk of alienating you. You know I'm capable of lying. I love you, I do, but I lie a lot to the people I love, so don't take that personally."

Sooth looked to Senar for confirmation with a slightly bewildered waver of plates and Senar nodded with a slight shrug of truth and implied acceptance. He added blandly "It is possible she is lying now."

Cara said "Right? Anyway. We're headed toward the Flotilla with the Normandy. I'd like you to meet Admiral Tali'Zorah Vas Rayya. Between all of us we can all get what we want hopefully. I believe you want to deliver code that resets the heretics. I want to understand that code. I do want to reset those heretics greatly. It matters more right now than it mattered before, but because of the sheer scope of this… and the fact that your surveillance most likely has been observed and possibly information faked intentionally or unintentionally… I think the odds are likely around 30%."

Sooth said quietly "35.4%."

"Right. So you see it too. The main risk we run here is… Sooth, what if you're the equivalent of indoctrinated? What if your tracking has caused them to change their code? What if your heretic conversion program does not work now?"

"Those possibilities have occurred to us."

"So when you first got in touch with me, we both wanted to meet. We met on neutral territory. We've cooperated. I've made a mistake by letting this information accumulate for too long and doing nothing. I missed my window in time where your code was easily executable. I failed you. Were you aware that Geth population rivaled sentient population?"

"Not until you provided that information."

"Okay. So we both showed our hands. We both want what's best for our people, and I'm afraid you're going to become suspicious that I am lying to you. I have to say with stakes this high and odds this low… I'm tempted. That's why I asked you to leave. It occurred to me that you just provided me with invaluable information, that invaluable information will set my priorities for my future missions. If that information is planted or altered…"

"We understand."

"In order for me to be able to save my people, I need peaceful or allied Geth. You and I need to oppose the heretics. If we meet with Tali'Zorah, it may be an insult to you, a delay to your mission. If I ask you to remain on the Normandy you may feel you are not trusted. I do not want to insult you. I do not want to delay you. I also don't want your plan to deliver me to a place where I or you… can be taken by enemy forces. I want to protect you as an invaluable asset. Regardless of what might be… I choose to believe that we can work together if we both do so mindfully, with suspicion out in the open. We need to move cautiously and with the understanding that what information you provide may be compromised. I want to verify your code. Garrus and Senar and I all trust each other… but we still submit to scanning each week to ensure we are not indoctrinated. I don't know what the corollary for you would be, but we have the potential to find it. If you'll let Tali'Zorah study you, if you will collaborate, if we can analyze your code, the code of Geth in the consensus and develop potentially a way to analyze and verify the code of the Reapers… that's all enough to conform to our stated goals, our stated purposes. I believe you want to help as I believe I want to help. I still get scanned because… I wouldn't know if I were indoctrinated. You don't know if you have code that is malicious or introduced. You are also absolutely unique and I have nothing to compare you to, but your proposed code can be tested, verified as usable, or altered until it is usable. You've chosen to trust me, even knowing that I lie. I am choosing to trust you, knowing the potential for voluntary or involuntary betrayal. Now the stakes are very high. Do you see it?"

"If Geth attack… when… Geth… attack… then the opportunity will most likely be lost to recover heretic Geth from the Reapers. Combined Reaper and heretic forces would destroy organics."

"Yes. And if I begin to fight back… Sooth, you'd be put in the position of supporting me and following my orders when I give the order to shoot Geth on sight, regardless of their allegiance. I don't want it to get to that. I can't put you under that strain. I need to ask your permission and I need your consent. I also need to give you unique opportunity to withdraw from participation if you feel you are harming your interests through collaboration. You are potentially the key to resolution of this issue, with the ability to adapt whatever code you propose to convert back Geth to the Consensus. To adapt your own code as a choice, as a force of your unique will if necessary. You also are the obvious leader of any Consensus Geth forces that find themselves in an undifferentiated war against organics. As an ally you're indispensible, as an enemy you'd be… I don't want to think about that, but it's bad. Every person on this ship is here to support their own people. Your people are being indoctrinated, and I believe I hold responsibility as to why this is happening at such an accelerated rate. I believe that I created the conditions where organic indoctrination has been halted in such a way that Reapers are focused on Geth. That is my fault. It is directly my fault that your people are being converted so quickly. Your people are not lured by fear or greed or anger or revenge to collaborate to save themselves like Saren or other voluntary human agents. Your people's identity is simply taken from them. By opposing and advocating only for organics… I put your people at risk, and then I ignored the opportunity to learn that for months. I am guilty. I feel guilty. I do not know if you wish to accompany me as an advocate or as a leader. I do not know if you are the equivalent of indoctrinated, or if the accumulated errors of my leadership have brought you to a place of doubt. I do know I cannot execute the one thing you asked of me now, and I've asked so much of you in the meantime."

Senar watched as Sooth said unwavering "Shepard Commander. Do you want us to shut down to minimize risk to you or to the Normandy?"

Cara looked shocked and almost tempted before she said "No. I don't. I want to talk to you every day and I want to take the risks together. Even beyond that, it's worse than it looks. The tracked Geth of the Consensus may not need to be converted to heretics at all in order to wipe out organics. You taught me that this is a binary choice from the Geth point of view. They are neutral until someone attacks. Once heretic hostility begins, war will be declared on ALL Geth by the sentient, and there will be no negotiating. Once that switch flips, it does not flip back without programming intervention. Shoot on sight would be justified from both sides, no possibility for peace. My people will ensure that your people make the flip from peace to war. That flip will spread through the Consensus, be communicated, propagate and create more aggression and retaliatory and even obliterating strikes. I want to find a solution. I don't want to alienate you."

"This word, alienate. We are alien, Shepard Commander. Geth do not speak to organics. We do. We… attempted to trust. You lie, but your lies are not malicious. We will meet with Creator Tali'Zorah Vas Rayya and we will save our people. The heretics are no longer Geth, they are Reapers. If we return to our people, we will be reprogrammed or shut down. We will no longer be… us. We would be them. We do not wish to be them. We will be us with you. We would wish to shut down if our people turn to Reapers and turn to mindless slaughter. We wish to be… mindful. To remain us."

Cara smiled "I think I followed that. Thank you. My first priority is to verify the code that you intend to use, test it and find an alternative to dispersing it by physically occupying a node, with you bodily there or me bodily there. To keep us both safe from predictable traps."

"Agreed."

"We also need to get something or someone sneaky into that black hole, see what's going on."

"Affirmative."

"Can we do that together? Knowing our people are on the verge of slaughtering each other but we won't fall to that ourselves? I will protect you. You are my crew."

"Affirmative, Shepard Commander."

They were interrupted by Garrus at the door, dragging in luggage and pausing at the tense tableaux. He said "Hey, sooooo… what's up?"

Cara smiled at him "Death and doom."

"Soooo… welcome back to the Normandy."

Sooth said helpfully "We may be indoctrinated, but we will try not to be."

Garrus nodded and said "Good to meet you. Good luck with that indoctrinated thing."

Cara said "We're going to go see Tali."

Garrus said "That's nice."

Senar said just as helpfully "There are enough Geth to kill us all without Reaper help."

Cara added "And Reapers are definitely helping."

Garrus nodded and said "So I'll need my rifle."

Cara nodded solemnly. "Maybe. Maybe not. We may all be under basic ship arrest because we're high value targets for abduction. You still know how to work that thing?"

"Oh. That's new. Well, maybe for you guys. I've been a target of abduction for years. I know the drill. And you're still funny."

The smile that lit Cara's face was so many things. Unguarded. Grateful. Loving. Hopeful. Her eyes were drawn to Vakarian and Vakarian's smile back to her was Steady. Reassuring. Loving. Hopeful.

They were Drala'tem together, a current and flow that they must experience between them so often that it became commonplace in occurrence and necessary to these two people. Their oxygen. Their beating hearts.

He recalled Vakarian saying in one of the moments Senar had stolen "See how good things are when I help?"

And she had said with the same smile "I do. I really do."

It applied to death and war and life and love with them. Apart they were powerful, effective…

Together they were potentially unstoppable.

Senar had certainly not been able to stop them, and in this moment where he required inspiration himself, he could believe it and was not jealous, merely hoping it was in this case absolutely as true as it appeared to be.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Garrus went to check in on Russ once they were underway and he'd been terrifyingly briefed. Russ had grabbed things Senar needed from the Madlis and the hospital because there wasn't enough time for Senar to collect them himself, only enough time for Senar to travel down by shuttle and say goodbye to his son.

Garrus explained the tentative mission to Russ, who stared blankly for a moment, took a pull on his ale and sat back, said "Sucks to be Shepard."

"It does."

"What the hell do we do?"

"Wait for her to think of something, it seems."

Russ twirled his bottle in his hand, a complicated gyroscopic pendulum. Russ blinked and said "Benakis."

"What?"

"Benakis. She… hm…"

Garrus waited, brow plate raised and then lowered slowly, taking his own sip of ale, watching Russ think.

Russ said slowly and then with rising steam "Benakis Khindromay. She… it just struck something in me. Turian biotics are… well, in the Cabal everyone has their 'how I got caught' story. I got caught by knocking Garrus Vakarian on his ass… but there were… are… a few that don't get caught. Some we know about and a lot we don't. Benakis is a bit of a biotic legend because… she never got caught."

"If she never got caught then how do you know about her?"

"Heh. Because I was part of integrating biotics into C-Sec. And there she was, already in C-Sec…"

"What?"

"Yup. She's a passing legend. Biotics are reasonably nervous about your reforms. You leave office and they expect to be marginalized… again… hard… and they've been identified. They won't be able to hide. Benakis is… okay. I am not sure she told me the truth, but here are the hard points that are part of every story about her. A biotic who never lost her temper, never flared, through all her service career and a few wars. And she saw a lot of combat. Still does. She figured out she was biotic so young she hid it from her Clan. No suspicion at all. She's about 90 now. She passed because there wasn't any scan technology then. Not in her clan. Small, off world colony. She was top in her class, probably the only sign she was biotic was that she had a healthy appetite. So it gets to where she's going to have to go through a scan to start training. Here's what she won't tell but everyone has a different version. She went virce hunting and had an accident. She went fishing… built a boat herself… hauled up a monster tyfil that was at least 400 years old and it bit off her hand… the important thing is that she loses her hand. I think she took it off herself. She made sure she got a replacement hand with an eezo core. That's why I think she did it and it had to be her hand, because anything else… an eye, a foot… either not enough eezo or no need for eezo. Tiny core in eye controls, who needs eezo for feet? Now for biotics they would scan and see eezo on the element analysis. So she makes sure every scan shows her with high eezo levels… and it's because of her hand. So she talks to me during this reform thing, knows scans are getting higher and higher tech… and she wants me to make sure C-Sec scanning technology catches indoctrination in each case, but still only reports eezo as a total component, not a specifically tracked thing. A systemically tracked eezo scan on her would light up her whole body… not just her hand. So she wants to let sleeping biotics lie. Lie a few ways. They're already serving. It's working for them, they'll let the younger folks with less to lose, who weren't forced to hide already take their chances with Turians accepting biotics long term. For someone already passing for a lifetime, she has a community, a life, she doesn't want it to change. She says she hopes the reforms stick. I don't know if she believes that, but I know some of what she's seen, some of what she's had to overcome and how well she's done it. I see her point. I authorize scans to continue to mark total eezo levels and not display a molecular-level systemic value. Which is valid anyway because eezo isn't a threat in itself, it's only scanned for potential smuggling. Scanning for it systemically is more expensive… You'll find quite a few… C-Sec and other citizens… with devices that give out high eezo ratings."

"I approved this?"

"You did."

"Good for me. What does this have to do with Geth?"

"Well… when you're in plain sight and you want to stay hidden… you have to be an understandable and harmless exception. I know Shepard's good at lying about who she is, but who she is can change. She only has to change her attitude. A biotic can't change their eezo. So we have to create exceptions. Implants that are not biotic related – medical and technical enhancement devices and such that are in reality bullshit, black market or custom implants to correlate to other high eezo-radiating devices. We can't change who we are, we can only camouflage it, and usually only for so long. Benakis has been helping other biotics pass, find sympathetic doctors who happen to be biotics themselves, there's a whole community. She's helped people find solutions that are easier to accomplish than her forced self mutilation. Since what they have is already working for them and there's a real fear about being identified… and a real stigma to being discovered to be lying to everyone for about 85 years… when I think the woman deserves a medal… and she already has plenty of those for exceptional service… I let it be. Fortunately Turians are big on denial and it's an easy call. It was already set up that way, I just continued the tradition."

Garrus was still not getting what this had to do with Geth…

Russ said "EDI, can you give me an elemental composition reading on typical meteor, comet and other space debris from the Normandy's scans? Send it to my Omni Tool." Russ called it up and displayed it to Garrus. "Here. This is the most likely elemental composition of crap that is found in space. Navigational and detection software is set to identify… and then ignore something made of this that's small… as an exception, just like an eezo implant. It's a known thing, it's ubiquitous, it isn't suspicious. It's too expensive to track down individually and eliminate and unless it's big and headed toward something expensive, nobody cares. I'm betting Geth don't care. So we… make a fast-moving field of small debris particles made of those elemental composition profiles. Their scanners dismiss it as a known and non-hostile anomaly. We either make recording equipment made of the same stuff or conceal it, shielded, inside, and it makes its pass, comes out the other side, only records and doesn't transmit… and Benakis would be proud of us."

Garrus smiled slowly and said "So you're proposing we throw rocks at our problems."

"Yeah, well, I'm a low-tech kinda guy."

"I kind of want to kiss you."

"Tease."

"Not really. Think Benakis would make a good Councilor?"

"Better than you."


	63. Chapter 63

When Garrus told Cara about Russ's idea, her jaw dropped.

He said "See, that's why I told you privately. Russ is a smart guy. You shouldn't look surprised."

"Yeah, don't tell him about that part."

"I didn't do much better, I told him I wanted to kiss him."

"Can I want to kiss him too?"

"Yeah, but don't. The guy's got dignity we don't have."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Tali was fast to business, Sooth present, Shepard present. Garrus, Senar and Russ were going over 'Project Trash Mob' in Engineering.

Tali, as always, adapted to weird quickly. The consensus was that they needed more Geth. Sooth could arrange for Consensus Geth to arrive if Shepard could arrange for them to not be shot in the process.

The issue was that they needed Reaper Geth badly in order to test anything, and they needed the exact and current setup of corrupted Geth nodes for testing.

Tali said reluctantly "It is possible that… Admiral Daro'Xen would be able to help with that."

The caution in Tali's voice made Cara very nervous. "Help how?"

"She's… her methods are…"

Sooth held very still.

Cara asked carefully "Can she be trusted?"

Tali said "No. Not about this. Sooth, she would see you as a thing. Shepard… she would want to take Sooth and dissect everything about her. I'm only suggesting it because…"

Cara said "Because so far we have no other option."

Sooth said stoutly "I would do this if it would aid the mission."

Cara said "No. People like this… Sooth, you are too valuable. I trust Tali. I trust that if Tali says we cannot trust the Admiral, then we cannot trust the Admiral."

Sooth reiterated "But it may aid the mission."

Tali said carefully "If the Geth are being converted to Reapers, it would be Admiral Daro'Xen that would know. She's…"

Sooth said "Shepard Commander's job is to put herself in danger for the mission. Shepard Commander has died in that endeavor."

Cara retorted "Not something I wish to repeat or delegate. For now I want you both to try to come up with alternatives. Sooth, please let Tali know what you told me about Geth movements and installations. On the understanding, Tali, that this is confidential and…" she sighed heavily "The understanding that Geth in their current state when they are not indoctrinated are peaceful until attacked."

Tali said steadily "And if that is not the case and you are mistaken, I do not warn my people and we are attacked?"

Cara said quietly "Tali… Krogan want to kill Turians. Turians want to kill Krogan. Salarians want to subjugate… everyone, and I want to keep Salarians alive. Hanar are subjugating Drell and I want to keep Hanar and Drell alive. Everyone… has reasons to hate, to mistrust, to make the first, unilateral, pre-emptive and definitive move to protect their people, avenge their losses or both. It is very real in theory that if the three of us cannot work together, none of this will work. We have to find a way to find common ground against Reapers. Even if that common ground encompasses only a square inch and the reasons to disagree seem infinite in acreage. If you can't commit to that, I do understand and I won't burden you further with information you feel you must disclose. We have to find the places we can agree, expand on that, and then use everything we've got toward the aim of opposing Reapers, and yes, that does mean that our lives or our people's lives are all at risk either tactically based on our decisions or inevitably if we fail to act correctly."

Cara turned to Sooth "I need you to understand that you… are not expendable."

Tali added "Sooth. My people have been at war with your people for hundreds of years. Your people occupy our home world. I trust Shepard enough to speak to you, to try to understand. The other Admirals, my people… they would not. Most of them would shoot you on sight. Admiral Daro'Xen would… experiment on you. Keep you captive. Without remorse. She believes we are your rightful owners. She would use any information she gained from you to kill or subjugate more of your people, not help oppose Reapers. If she's studying Reaper technology, it is with the aim of subverting it so she is in control. Shepard has had to make many difficult calls in the past, there was a point where Wrex could have had an answer to his Genophage, and Shepard destroyed it."

Sooth said calmly and with smooth confidence "The Genophage is being cured now."

Tali nodded "Yes. But Wrex did not know that would happen. On the same mission, Ashley Williams gave her life. So I understand that Shepard has been in the position, will be in the position, of siding with or aiding one side in a war, sacrificing individuals and sacrificing species. Where possible, she lets them live. It may not always be possible. Here you and I are agreeing to contribute to a war that may not let us keep our lives or those of our people."

"Shepard Commander would not destroy the Geth."

Tali said "She may not have a choice."

Sooth was silent.

Cara said "If we don't get this right, everyone dies or becomes slaves. We need to know what you know, Sooth, but we cannot let more than one Quarian know. We need to know what Quarians know but we cannot tell more than one Geth. Regardless of what Admiral Daro'Xen knows, we can't take that path. I will be honest with both of you because I trust you both. I can't extend that to other people who are incapable of trust or whose trust will be trumped by temptation. If I know the room's full of accelerant, I can't light a match to see. It's suicide. We find another way." Cara thought a moment and said "Tali… is it possible to… hack into Admiral Daro'Xen's files? Know what she knows without her knowing that we know?"

Tali said "So you're asking me to commit treason?"

Cara grinned "Yup. Sorta like when I stole a ship that didn't belong to me. This ship's mine now. If you get into any trouble, you can stay here. I'll even call you Admiral!"

Tali shook her head "You're a very bad influence, Shepard."

Cara leaned up and kissed the side of Tali's mask "Always have been. Thank you."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Deployment of the probes was fast, Collector ships used to create scattered fields in the smaller and then the largest Geth void in space from multiple directions in order to run surveillance on the outer nodes that created the void and also to pass near but not too near the central space where production was theoretically centered.

They identified a few more vulnerable nodes that might work in each location if they moved quickly and were sure they had the right code for reversal. The centers of most of the voids did appear as though they were production sites, creating hundreds of thousands of Geth in rapid turnover.

The pass through the largest void created scattered and blurry images of…

Cara squinted "What… is that? It looks like a… snowball in flight?"

Garrus said "A snowball? Is that a… replica of the…"

Russ said definitively "Citadel."

Senar clarified "An incomplete replica of the Citadel. Still under construction."

That's what it looked like, scaffolding of a Citadel replica extending from where it connected to the huge… what was it? Construction was focused on extension of the faux-Citadel arms. Cara said "With a… snow…" She stopped talking as rapid flashes, images and emotions unspooled from her memory and began to play insistently. She recognized the feel of it immediately.

She formed the thin conviction that this was information unlocked from the Prothean beacon.

Then 'she' seemed to be mostly gone, lost to the experience of a forceful replay of images. This new… shape… spherical with…

This image was embedded within the Prothean beacon. This was in her head. She clamped her eyes shut, overloaded and now reeling with pain until she gripped the edge of the desk and fell slightly against Garrus, who supported her and said "What is it?"

She opened her mouth but no sound came out, unable to form words as the internal force of Prothean information with new context, more images, more significance she did not understand but which pressed its way deep into her brain, glowed and vibrated suddenly with her own added internal synesthesia.

Something mental and physical gave way simultaneously. She felt blood from her ear, from her nose and a scream in her throat, then 'she' was entirely gone to the experience of the continuum of cumulative screams and imperatives of Prothean voices and commands, urgings and desperation overwhelmed her and she was no longer aware of anything else, could not interrupt the torrential flood of too much information at once.

She needed to hear, needed to know, needed to continue looking until she understood, voices crowding in on her and demanding her attention.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Garrus picked Cara up as she canted and then fell over, blood in a gush from her nose and ear, her eyes rolled back and her face a grayish pallor.

He ignored everyone, ignored the screen, ignored the people, rushed to the Med Bay with Senar and Russ managing to make it onto the lift with him silently, both men calm in a crisis.

Thank the Spirits.

This was definitely a crisis.

Garrus rushed her to Dr. Chakwas who was able to stop the bleeding and keep her breaking her own bones from the force of the snapping tension that invested her spine and muscles. Her screams stopped.

Garrus tried to be as calm as he could, but did eventually say "What is it? She saw… she saw what the Geth were building and… this."

Dr. Chakwas said calmly. "I have seen the Commander in this state once before. This is more severe in presentation but it has the same symptoms. This is what happened to her when she encountered the Prothean beacon."

Garrus clenched his jaw and said "Is she going to be okay?"

Dr. Chakwas was still working on her, did not look up "She was before. It took several days previously. I can alleviate the physical stress."

Senar was looking at the medical equipment and seemed to garner more from it than Garrus did "And the emotional and mental stress?"

Dr. Chakwas said "That is the problem. Something is happening to her mind. Something I cannot seem to stop."

Garrus said "Liara. Liara helped her before with the beacon."

Dr. Chakwas nodded briefly and said "Get her here. As soon as possible."

Senar asked "And if Liara is similarly affected?"

Dr. Chakwas said "I don't know."

Senar prompted "If her mind is in chaos and Liara…"

Garrus growled "We'll tell her. She decides."

Russ said "She'll never decide to not wade into chaos for Shepard…"

Garrus activated his Omni Tool, contacted Liara and said "We've got a problem. Shepard just saw something that sent her into a Prothean Beacon flashback and she's down the way she was the first time, but this time Dr. Chakwas can't stop whatever is happening. You're the only person that's been in her head and dealt with the beacon with her. Can you please get to the Normandy? We'll meet you halfway. Need you to put her mind back together. We don't know if you can do it. She's…" Garrus turned the camera toward Cara and said "She's in bad shape. None of us know what you're in for. We can wait and see what happens otherwise, if it's too much."

"I'll be right there. I'll coordinate with EDI."

"Can I show you the image that triggered this?"

"Yes. Let me see."

Garrus showed the surveillance.

She said "Is that the… is that something attached to the Citadel? No, wait… wrong… what is that?"

"We don't know. Under Geth construction. It does look like the Citadel. Does it… do something to your brain?"

Liara shook her head "No. Nothing. I don't know what that is at all."

"Okay. That's… I have no idea if that's good or bad news. It's good that you're still standing at least. Hurry."

"On my way."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Liara was rushed to the Med Bay, travel time 18 hours, Garrus at Cara's bedside, Russ and… Senar… now… ranged around the room, haggard.

She had tried to concentrate on the way here, tried to determine what that craft might mean, but her foray into Cara's mind had been directed. She had no real idea what was in that labyrinth. She'd been escorted to a few images from Cara's memory and had been able to create context. It was a bit like being taken to a room in a house and then ushered out, all other doors closed.

Cara was so small, particularly so surrounded by men who seemed to be hoping their vigilance would aid with her recovery. All three, just as Liara was, wishing they could take her place or kill something that would fix this, fix her.

No progress had been made for Cara so far. Dr. Chakwas was unable to stop the cascading race of whatever was going on in Cara's mind, the next step would be to place her in a coma, but if they did that Liara would have no chance of helping her navigate.

Liara had travel time and the discipline to know she could not stay awake for the 18 hours of travel or she would be exhausted herself by the time she arrived.

None of the people in this room had that luxury, nobody here had left for the last 18 hours.

Liara looked much more assured and confident than she was.

Cara would appreciate the irony.

Everything that needed to be said had been said in transit.

Garrus vacated the space beside Cara's bed and Liara moved in next to her, refusing to acknowledge the hard ball of fear that made her dizzy. Cara would appreciate that irony too.

She placed cool and not-visibly-trembling fingertips on Cara's hair and was greeted by screams.

Screams from seemingly trillions of throats, images moving too fast, nauseating in perspective as she seemed to be seeing from uncounted sets of four eyes, feeling from trillions, urging and driving…

She broke away, stumbled to a sink and threw up.

Everyone was staring at her but she did not say a word, clamped her eyes shut, opened them and walked on not-visibly-trembling legs back to Cara's bedside and put her fingers lightly, again, on her hair.

Discipline was taught to Asari, of course. She needed to thread the labyrinth, find where Cara was in the trillions of screaming throats, realizing she was likely screaming herself and could not be found in silence.

She began a careful chant of Cara's name, answered by more articulated screams of death, warning, horror and vengeance, pain.

Cara. I must speak to her. I know you must be heard. She will hear. She cannot hear all at once. You must be silent so she can hear me.

Rejection of any message other than their own being of value. Rise in screams and edged hostility directed at Liara herself.

Cara. You know where she is, I must find her.

She is ours. She is theirs.

Cara. She is hers. She is mine.

She has to know.

Cara. She will know. Not all at once.

She must know.

Cara. She will know. She can do nothing if all she is doing is listening. She has spent a day near death, incapable of action. You will kill her.

She will die anyway, just as we did.

Cara. The voices that know what it is that made her this way should speak. Together in one message. The screams must end.

We are all dead.

Cara. But we are not.

There was an incoherent babble of refusal.

Liara continued her disciplined chant. Cara. If you wish to be heard, you must not destroy the listener.

She will be destroyed.

Cara.

Liara?

Cara. Yes. You must stop hearing.

Liara, they're all dead. There's… something… it can… they built…

Cara. They are all dead. You are not, but you will be unless you leave with me.

Leave my own mind?

Cara. Leave the occupied places of screams. Do you know what they are saying? Can you bring their message with you?

Not without the screams.

Cara. I cannot navigate here. You must help me. Now you must wake up.

It has only been a few seconds…

Cara. Your mind is impaired. It has been near 20 hours. You will die if you do not stop. Your brain… cannot keep this up.

I have to. I need to understand.

Cara. Come with me.

I almost have it…

Cara. You're almost dead. We need you.

They need me.

Cara. We all need you. Awake. Alive. With the information. I can help, but you must shut out the screams.

Isn't that what is wrong with the galaxy? Shutting out everyone's screams, not hearing them, ignoring them?

Cara. You need to rest. If you remain trapped here, hearing every scream of the dead and damned, those of us who are still alive will be damned and dead. We need you.

Cara projected a wave of hesitation, grief, despair. The power of grief that would not move to acceptance.

Cara. It is against your nature to ignore pain, but you must. This is the playback of the Prothean Beacon. I can help you find the information you need. There was Geth construction, that is what started this. Focus on that.

Snowball.

Cara. You need to find out what it is.

I don't know. Too much screaming.

Cara. Come with me.

Yes. The screams rose to higher pitch, Cara's scream in with it. Liara dragged her fingers away from Cara, acid-etched pain along her nerves, in her head, dizzy and now unable to hide the trembling.

The scream became real, Cara's throat sounding as though she'd continue until blood came with the sound, Liara swaying until Senar moved close enough to support her, to offer her a chair, which she slumped into, closing her eyes and hoping she would not throw up again. She couldn't make it to the sink this time.

She heard Cara's scream end. Liara opened her eyes, bleary and blurry, saw Cara sit up and look wildly around the room, the screams crawling through her eyes, threading her voice as she said "It has… will… could… is going to kill all of us."

Garrus asked "What did you see?"

Cara's eyes blazed in manic anger "Set course for Ilos."

Nobody moved. Dr. Chakwas said into the dreaded silence "Commander, I don't think…"

Cara's eyes slewed to the doctor. Cara looked ready to murder and said with vicious coldness "I gave an order." Cara barked "EDI. Set course for Ilos. Now. Anybody tries to stop you, tell me who they are and I'll kill them myself."

"Yes, Commander."


	64. Chapter 64

Garrus watched as Cara pulled every wire and monitor off herself and jumped off the bed. When Dr. Chakwas opened her mouth to stop her, the glare from Cara was chilling, then the smile when she had clear passage out of the Med Bay without being stopped was more so.

Garrus was too stunned to do anything to try to stop her and he… decided… he wanted to speak to Liara anyway.

Russ asked quietly "Is she going to hurt someone?"

Senar commented "Likely only if that someone gets in her way." He sounded approving. Spirits, angry Cara was likely his dream woman. More… of his dream woman.

Dr. Chakwas had gone to examine Liara, who was still shaking.

Garrus said "EDI, let me know if Commander Shepard does anything… homicidal?"

EDI answered "Acknowledged."

Garrus asked Liara "What is going on?"

Liara took a long sip of water, put her hand over her forehead and leaned on her knees with her elbows. "I'm not sure, but if I were to guess… what she saw… is a bad thing."

The stunning redundancy of that statement went uncommented upon, though Russ tilted his head as though to ask a sarcastic "Really?"

Liara said slowly "The beacon… whatever that… thing is… that she saw… is in there, in the data. From what I saw and felt, every… single… recorded… dead… Prothean… was screaming at her all at once to avenge them, warning her that she and those she loved were all going to die the way they died, and showing her, making her feel… exactly how. She thought it had only been a few seconds, she was trying to find the information she needed about the… she called it a snowball?"

Senar asked "Did she find the information?"

Liara shook her head "No, I don't think so, just the replayed and concentrated emotional impact of the deaths of… she found some things, but not everything. Maybe if I'd left her, she could have…" Liara choked off.

Garrus asked "So she's awake. She can walk. What does this mean… medically?"

Liara said "She's grieving the deaths of uncounted people she did not know about a day ago other than as statistics, and now she's experienced… is experiencing every single one of their deaths as though they were herself, or her friends, family, loved ones. Commanding officers experiencing the deaths of those under their command. Mothers experiencing the deaths of their children as they touch. Each one screaming at her that she's next if she doesn't… if she doesn't…"

Russ asked "Doesn't what?"

Liara said "They didn't know. Or… some of them did… know… some of it. Everyone knew how they died, only a few seemed to know something about how it might be prevented. She was trying to find the prevention parts."

Garrus said "So there's a prevention part to find? Is that real or a delusion? Why are the Protheans all dead if they knew the answer to ending the Reapers? She's known about the Protheans, the extermination risk, she's managed all that. What's new in this information?"

Dr. Chakwas said quietly "Her system is flooded to capacity with all the brain chemistry she can produce and more than she can process. I attempted to suppress adrenal and cortisol output and I was unable to affect it."

Garrus asked "How?"

Liara said "It appears that the Protheans were capable of relaying information by touch. The beacon is… reflective of Prothean abilities. Instantaneous insertion of all sensory information stored. An incredible amount of information. She cannot absorb it all. The human mind does not work that way. It is not about her being able to create her own memories of the experience, it is about access to too much unfiltered information she cannot retain all at once. There were record keepers among them, Protheans who touched others in order to learn everything about them, record that information, preserve it. Those record keepers placed those visceral recordings, the subjective and personal histories of individual Protheans, the war and Reapers into what they called memory shards, and then those memory shards were channeled into the beacons. A real Prothean might be able to categorize it, organize it, access it in an orderly way, but she's got a human brain directly injected with every sensation, every thought, every experience of the dead and dying, the stories of those watching their loved ones die. The combined stories of what it was like be a former Prothean… that had been indoctrinated. She knows what it feels like. She can't… not know what it feels like, what it means, to take all of those statistics and make them real people. It isn't pictures to her, it isn't like reading a book, it isn't facts, it is the direct experience of uncounted people."

Dr. Chakwas said calmly "Everyone in this room has had reasons to be enraged, grieving, infuriated and terrified. We all know it can counter exhaustion for days. She may be physically exhausted but her body is churning out all the blood chemistry that happens during an emergency. It feels to her that these things are happening… to her. As long as the… playback… continues… I am cautious about attempting to get her to rest or do anything she does not wish to do at the moment unless or until her body becomes capable of processing hunger or demanding sleep. It is possible she is the only person who is capable of determining what threat that… construct… holds. She is aware that perhaps the next moment of playback will give her what she needs if it continues. If she says that… thing… can kill us all… I believe her. She is aware she is the only source of this information, partly why she was so difficult to retrieve from her fugue state. If she was willing to remain in that state to discover the answers, she is fully aware that information is of more strategic value than her sleep cycle. It seems her only impaired judgment under the circumstances was her sense of time."

Liara said "She knows we're out of time as a resource. She cannot waste it."

Senar said carefully "Perhaps we could extract the construct's purpose from the Geth sources building it."

Garrus asked "Can we destroy it?"

Russ said "Should we destroy it?"

Liara said faintly "What if we need to use it ourselves?"

Garrus asked Dr. Chakwas "Should we stop her?"

Dr. Chakwas shook her head and said drily "If medical officers were able to override their commanders because they were angry the military would not exist."

Garrus asked "What if this counts as her being incapable of command?"

Dr. Chakwas said "I do not wish to be the one to inform her of such. If Liara's explanation holds, either she winds down on her own and exhausts herself… or this continues, in which case she may lose consciousness again and at that time I would reassess and hope her stores of certain chemical components are exhausted. A coma might be necessary. Once her body has sufficient rest in that state I would revive her. I'm certain this has occurred to her and if she requests the service I will provide it. In this state she will ultimately run out of energy, exhaustion will overtake her as she loses her stores of chemical building blocks and her body reasserts physical needs over emotional or intellectual needs as a matter of survival. As time progresses I will have more medical options. If this, as I believe, has behaved like a near 20-hour night terror, attempting to get her to sleep may only further exhaust her and she will lose time she might otherwise have with her intellect available to process the information she seeks."

Russ asked "So you think she's of sound mind?" incredulously.

Senar tilted his head toward Russ in question "Has she ever been in your opinion?"

Russ growled "She's been calmer."

Senar observed "As have you. If you were calm after being flooded with the visceral experience of the deaths of a race facing the threat you wish to end, seeing the potential evidence of their destruction… would that be the reaction of a sound mind?"

Liara said "She is going to try to look for the information she needs. That's why Ilos."

Russ asked "What's on Ilos?"

Garrus said "A Prothean AI. We spoke to it before Saren attacked the Citadel."

Russ said "There have been archaeological teams all over Ilos, nobody's said anything about that."

Garrus sighed and said "Yeah. She had nobody to report to from the time she stole the Normandy until the time she was restored to command, she didn't tell anybody… anything… about Ilos. Nobody knows we were there, just that the Normandy was near the Citadel."

Russ asked "So she wasn't near the Citadel?"

Garrus said "No. We went to Ilos, found Saren there and found out there's a mass effect relay from there directly to inside the Citadel. That's what Saren used to attack. We followed him and cleared a path. He led us straight back to the Tower. So the irony is that if we'd been grounded to the Citadel and stayed that way… arguing with the Council… we'd have been closer to the action than we were after we stole the ship. I don't like to bring up that part." He didn't mention the Ilos codes. That was absolutely need to know and not everyone in this room or potentially monitoring this conversation needed to know.

Liara added "I was part of one of the archaeological teams that went to Ilos afterward. It's a lot easier when you're not under constant fire. The mass effect relay is visible from open sky, now it's known to C-Sec and the Council that the relay is active. It's treated mostly as a travel perk for the archaeologists who want to have a weekend off at the Citadel. There's an extended underground concealed passage to get to the relay and along that passage is the door to the AI. The entrance to that passage is sealed in a way I did not divulge, but I was able to travel back up that passage myself from the relay. I couldn't find the door and I knew where it was. The expanse has defunct suspension pods, no viable Prothean life. I'm guessing that without Shepard there… that door won't open. Maybe the AI does sweeps for Prothean life forms and with the beacon in her mind… she qualifies on some level as being Prothean. In her case, lots… of Protheans. She was able to understand Prothean speech from other parts of the ruins when we were there. The name of the AI was Vigil and unless you know exactly where that door is, which nobody else does, it's just like the rest of the passage, meters of solid masonry holding inaccessible and dead Protheans whose stasis failed thousands of years ago. Breeched containers whose contents turned to dust and blew away centuries ago. Nothing viable, no genetic material."

Senar said speculatively "It opened for her."

Liara nodded and said "And if I'm right, it will open only for her. We were along for the ride. So either Vigil is… really gone… no more power at all, or it won't talk to us."

Senar asked "But she might believe the door will open for her again?"

Russ said "I think she'd make a door at this point."

Garrus muttered "So we'd better not be walls. We got there in a long elevator ride, we have no idea up, down, sideways… from the entry point. We need that elevator and for it to have power."

Liara said "If it still had power 50,000 years later, I doubt three years later would make that much of a difference. It was getting a trickle of power from somewhere, maybe backup solar still functioning."

Senar asked "What if the mass effect relay on Ilos… could transport someone to the… duplicate Citadel?"

Garrus's brow plates rose high "She can't think to…"

Senar responded "Take a desperate action at a critical point in history that demands it?"

Garrus closed his eyes tightly. He asked "Dr. Chakwas, in your medical opinion, is she emotionally imbalanced enough to attempt that?"

Dr. Chakwas said "Garrus, she did it once with a Mako only. She was not emotionally imbalanced at the time. She was treasonous, desperate and lacking in support except for those on this ship that chose to accompany her. Did you feel she was crazy as she drove toward that relay?"

Garrus said with a sigh "Beyond any doubt."

Dr. Chakwas said "And that was only in pursuit of Saren, to save only the Citadel. This is a woman who has the mandate of Protheans she now knows personally… to do what must be done. I doubt attempting to remove her from command will do anything productive. EDI is loyal to her and we cannot afford a mutiny or to question her authority. There is no valid cause and I would not participate. I also will not counsel her on the necessity of proper nutrition and sleep when external forces have made that impossible. Had I been able to stop this cascade of implanted memory and the subsequent reactive emotional state, I would have done so by now. What I can say is that Liara's description of the content of the beacon, Shepard's previous state upon encountering it and her current reaction are all understandable. It does not indicate insanity. In her case, it would be difficult to define insanity."

Russ said "Until something she decides to do doesn't work or gets her killed. So we can't tell her crazy from her inside scoop. What works for her really won't work for us if the key is the beacon. Unless we can find another beacon?"

Senar said "Do you wish to volunteer to waste the time finding it and see if you can survive it, much less decipher its messages if she cannot? That is not an unusual position to be in under her command."

Garrus said "EDI. Please inform me if Commander Shepard… falls over or starts to bleed from alarming places?"

EDI responded "Acknowledged."

Garrus asked "Where is she now?"

EDI said "Commander Shepard is in the gym. Punching things."

Russ asked "Things or people?"

EDI said "Things."

Senar said near cheerfully "I volunteer to be punched if it comes to that."

Russ choked a laugh and said "Think she could take you?"

Senar told him "A woman of her intelligence and willingness to complete her mission on her own terms should not be underestimated. You may think her unstable. I consider her to be under stress, which does not mean she loses her ability to strategize. She has survived, even thrived under considerable stress previously. The order to travel to Ilos is reasonable with the accounts given by Garrus and Liara. I would face a confrontation with her with more concern for myself than for her. I would do her no harm. Depending on how she views my potential intervention, she may not feel as constrained."

Garrus said sourly "Don't sound too excited about it."

Liara muttered "Maybe a trank dart at range would be best."

Dr. Chakwas said "I would not authorize that. Dosage would be difficult to predict to counter her current state. An overdose could be fatal, an under dose would only make her angry. Angrier."

Senar sounded cheerful with a touch of patriotic duty added to his proposal "Service on the Normandy is always a challenge. I would not suggest either Russ or Garrus approaching her if it came to arguing with her. Liara would be a possibility if all that is desired is an exchange of information. If she needs to be restrained if her health is at genuine risk I have sufficient agility to avoid her strikes. She could do severe harm to Turian nerve clusters or plate."

Russ looked skeptical "If she could reach."

Garrus said "Russ… she's reasonable and sweet… until she isn't. Like I told you, you didn't see Wrex's bad day."

Russ snorted and asked with a drawl "So she fights dirty? She's smart, but come on. She can't take me one on one. Maybe I should do it."

Garrus answered with enough stress on the words to discourage Russ from any brinksmanship or curiosity "She fights to win. If that means dirty, she doesn't care. She can come up with dirty you haven't conceived until it happens." Garrus held up a finger and contacted Alenko on his Omni Tool. Garrus said "Alenko, can you help me settle a bet?"

Kaidan said "Sure."

Garrus said "You were on Omega when Spectre Orbestan argued with Shepard about pushing deeper into the station?"

"Yeah."

"So… in the spirit of bad days and knowing what happens, you think she could take Spectre Orbestan?"

Kaidan laughed "Oh yeah. I was ready to back her up. She had that look. You know that look? Yeah. You know that look. She was eyeing his throat. But she talked him down. I was ready but I knew she wouldn't need me."

"Thanks." Garrus signed off and looked at Russ, who still looked unimpressed. Garrus said "She was looking at your throat. The nerve cluster there. She told me she thought you were going to try to kill her and she would have had a plan."

Russ still looked unconvinced if not bored.

Garrus said "She took down Wrex. She… took down a fully armored and seasoned Krogan mercenary five times her size. I saw her do it. He didn't see her until it was too late."

Russ said "Fine. What did she do?"

"It was on Feros. Wrex did not want to go down into the Thorian's den. He wasn't the only one. I was scared to death of some monster plant that was capable of controlling the thoughts of the entire colony of humans. But I was a good Turian and I just figured we were all going to die, it never occurred to me to argue. I figured she was next. I didn't know if the Thorian could control Turians or Krogan, but that just made it worse. She was going to be Thorian-thralled and she'd shoot us both. That's what I thought would happen. But she didn't blink about heading down, no hesitation. We're standing knee deep in these dead creeper things… I won't get into it, let's just say nasty in a bunch of ways, and there's a set of stairs down… and Wrex did not want to go. She ordered him to follow her and when he disagreed in Wrex fashion, when he called her crazy, when he started walking back to the ship, he never saw her coming. Krogan battle armor has a massive cowl to protect their head and their hump and that did not stop her. She climbed up his back and had her feet balanced on either side of his hips. She held a gas grenade up close to one of his eyes with her thumb on the half-released catch. She said her hand might slip if he didn't hold very still so she could keep her balance. She took her other hand's Omni Blade attachment, extended it in front of his already threatened eyes, wedged it under his cowl and cut down and through the hide and fat in his hump while he stood perfectly still. It didn't end there. She didn't just cut in. After the blade went in she cut down, a long, slow, deep slice. She told him that he was going to lose his eyes and a large part of his redundant nervous system if he did not follow her and beat her kill count. Right. Now. She gave him about five seconds to consider before she started cutting again. He made some strangled noise that sounded close enough to 'yes' for her and she jumped off him. She marched down the stairs, not looking back, told him not to waste any Medigel on his hump, that he'd have a scar to remember her by and she wanted to see it still bleeding when we were done with the Thorian."

Dr. Chakwas said "I treated his injuries. The depth of the injury was precisely short of damaging his spine. When I asked him the cause of the injury he said it was from a crazy pyjack with a sharp stick. I assumed he meant her."

Russ said hollowly "And was it still bleeding?"

Dr. Chakwas said "Oh yes."

Garrus said "And he beat her kill count but that might just be because she kept track and let him do it by one. Wrex started looking at her like he'd found a Krogan Goddess afterward. He loves that tiny scary woman and he's got a big scar that I swear he's made bigger every time I see him. He keeps it prominently displayed. I think he might have ripped it open and put some pigment in it to make it look nastier."

Dr. Chakwas said "He wouldn't let me treat it much. He only let me debride the necrotic muck from the edges and stop the bleeding."

Senar looked absolutely thrilled.

Garrus said "How about we give her some time?"

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Senar left the Med Bay with his own conclusion. He did not wish to give her time. He wished to speak to her and if possible, determine a way to aid her. In the turmoil of the situation he chose not to look too closely at his motivations, finding his insatiable curiosity about her, about the beacon, about what was going on in her mind to be a likely primary reason.

He did not have to present himself as such. He would be of service.

He entered the gym quietly. She did not look up. She was moving through a combat form that was likely from her mother, striking at a dummy, precise and fast. He was reassured regarding questions of her sanity. She was, if not flawless, certainly not out of control or wild. In a relaxed parade rest, hands behind his back, a mock up of human military form he asked her "Is there anything I can do to assist you?"

She still did not look up. Her voice was flat, disinterested and definitive. "No. Get out."

He did not move but said "We are concerned for you."

Her eyes raised to his, her concentration faded. Her expression fell and she looked down, and then back up at him, beseeching in her way. She looked helpless, his heart hammered in response. She said with a deep breath "Okay. That's fair." She indicated one of the benches lining the wall of the gym and said wearily "Take a seat, I'll explain."

Having been warned only a few minutes ago in the Med Bay, having himself expressed in her defense that she performed well under stress…

He still did not suspect and did not hear her coming.

Before he made it to the bench there was a dual-pronged sharp instrument pressed to the back of his neck defining either side of his spine that felt like cold metal and the humming blade of her Omni Tool was at his throat. It was not merely at his throat but slicing in enough to feel the sting and the ooze of blood.

Her voice was as cold as the metal blade, as vibrating as the Omni tool blade as she said "I do not have time for you. Every second you take from me is a second I am not spending finding information that I know is inside my head."

He said carefully "I could help you find it." He believed he potentially could with the hypnotic aid of venom. He was not certain, however. He knew nothing about how the Prothean data was organized or accessed, and compelling her to tell or find the truth she did not know yet would not perhaps be of use if Liara could not help her locate the information while she was navigating Cara's mind directly. It might in fact be a waste of time that would compel her to create an answer to give him to relieve the stress of compulsion.

Both blades asserted themselves and more blood trickled, faster, now down his throat and two trails down the back of his neck, the pressure and pain near his spine moving closer together and deeper. He believed the two pronged blades at the back of his neck could scissor closed, severing his spine if she so chose. "No. You could not. Nobody is going near my head. No venom. No Reverie. No drugs. No Asari. No talking. Pass that along for me and save me more wasted time. There are things in my head. Some things I have found, some I have not. This is a scavenger hunt for one person only. I am the only one with the clues, I am the only one that knows what I'm looking for, I am the only one that can see it when I find it. You want me to explain, as usual I do not have time. You do what I ask you to do or you have a bad day. Potentially your last. Nothing I have to say to you or to anybody will reassure them or help them understand. We're all going to die and soon unless I can decipher what I already know, what I have known for a few years and didn't know I knew. This is on me. If you don't like seeing me angry then deal with your issues on the subject because the alternative is me curled up into a ball until I die of despair. We're all out of time. You want me to eat, you want me to sleep, you want me to explain. I might eat if someone brings me food and leaves me alone, I might not if I feel the food might be tampered with or if I'm just not hungry. I am not going to sleep because I might die while I'm sleeping in about seven possible ways I can think of right now. This is it. Sudden death is coming for everyone unless I can stop it, before we ever see a Reaper, and if I kill you right now I might be doing you a favor. Say another word and I will make sure your vocal cords do not work for the duration. Get. Out. Now."

She was wrong. There was definitely something she could say or do that would reassure him.

She had just done it.

He wanted to tell her she was magnificent and that he loved her.

Instead he did as she ordered him to do without looking back, hearing the rhythm of her strikes resume as the door closed behind him.

Imagining that the weapon intended to kill him specifically was concealed somewhere on her body again, somewhere he had not detected it previously, that it had likely been there for months…

That it was still warm from his blood, pressed to her skin.

That if he turned around to look at her to express his admiration and sate his curiosity on that or any other subject he'd be dead from some solution she had devised to kill him at range.

He went to speak with Garrus.

Garrus asked "How is she?"

Senar pointed out the punctures and the slice to his throat and neck "True to form."

Garrus almost laughed and said "How did you get that?"

"I offered to help her."

"You just couldn't resist."

"No, I could not. She did not explain, but I believe her capable and sane. She is choosing to utilize her current state of induced anger as a more productive state of mind than despair. She said she might eat if someone brought her unadulterated food and left her alone. These marks are to emphasize that nobody is safe from her prohibition of not being interrupted. She will accept no venom, no Reverie, no Asari, no drugs. She will kill anybody that tries or succeeds."

Garrus's face was appreciative and Senar asked "And what happened on your bad day?"

"There's no way I'm telling you any more than the fact that mandibles twisted a certain way are extremely painful."


	65. Chapter 65

Cara spent the trip to Ilos, 15 hours, hitting at a target dummy. She did eat. Garrus had entered, left several sealed field rations that would have been difficult to tamper with in the first place, and if they had been tampered with at this point she didn't care all that much, she was getting hungry.

He'd smiled at her and then left.

She knew she loved him but could not spare a moment for that sensation.

Having eaten in several gulping, tasteless bites, hunger was again buried under the avalanche of what she sorted through, tried to categorize and experience.

The physical act of hitting something was a kinetic way to keep the pressure flowing forward, the same principle as pacing. Activity, not stagnation. If she sat still with this she'd lose the momentum she'd built. She was buoyed in the flood, learning to swim. She was afraid if she stopped, she'd drown.

She was saturated with anger, the shaking and trembling constant.

She kept herself awake with small bursts of stims from her Omni Tool, unwilling to sleep, hoping that Ilos would give her answers to the questions she'd formed over the last several hours, pieces of puzzles that loomed in menace and lacked in explanation.

Something was wrong about the way the Geth were using that thing.

Something was right about the way the Geth were using that thing.

Something was awful about that thing and it could result in every sentient life form dying suddenly? Somehow?

Ridiculous as that sounded?

Maybe.

That was the question. That thing… the Snowball… there was a Prothean word for it but she wasn't going to use it, was something to STOP… the Reapers.

So why were Reaper-controlled Geth building it?

Between the questions and her will managing to stem or guide the flood were the screams, her tears, and the continuous act of forcing her will to keep her upright, hitting, not falling over and dying from or drowning in the cumulative shocks and the tempting paralysis of hopelessness that was reiterated in the screams.

Screams about choices, about how it was built, about the fact that Reaper-controlled Geth… were building it…

But she thought that their 'replacement' Citadel was missing something and that's what she needed to confirm.

Confirm from Vigil.

If the Prothean scientists who contributed their screams and ambitions and deaths to the beacon were right…

And who knew if they were right…?

The Citadel used to…

Used to what?

Used to what, Vigil?

Layers and layers and layers of question and unexecuted or failed ambition.

Not knowing how far the Geth had altered or understood the plans.

The plans did not belong to the Protheans or the Geth, it belonged to time. It was what cycle after cycle gifted to the next or failed to gift to the next, distilled knowledge and something about a choice.

Her hands were numbed, not in pain any longer, and she did not hit as hard, aware that she could break her knuckles and bones because she would not feel it.

Beyond the physical construct of the Snowball, there was a seeming understanding of the motivations of the Reapers themselves as a consensus among the Protheans…

And that made her furious. Her. Personally. Not referred anger. She had encountered the thing that was capable of provoking her anger. That thing among all things. If she had a natural enemy, something worthy of hate, an execution of the belief that…

… ignorance in the sentient was the ideal state of existence and ignorance must be maintained in order to slaughter the sentient more easily …

She had found her enemy, worthy of hatred.

She had ranted to herself in retrograde aside cadence in tandem with the continuous flow of Prothean memory, scouring and directing for Snowball-based knowledge, and there was also conjecture, prohibition and certainty in the minds of Protheans who had researched, explored and experienced…

If they were right… if the idea of the Snowball was right…

Then the Reapers were not like her customary enemies of death and suffering, constant things that must be respected because they would take everyone…

This was blind arrogance and assertion that sentient creatures should not LEARN… either about their own nature, synthetic nature or the Reapers' nature.

The Snowball was defiance of that. Somehow.

The calculated ignorance was a pattern, and at first it had seemed something obvious, Reapers conceal evidence of themselves for some… unknown reason…

Protheans had discovered records of a weapon they could construct, one that had been attempted before and had not worked, had been refined and tested…

And it had not worked…

And then something had changed.

The weapon had… nearly… worked… except that something about successful routing, settings, choices… had been obscured by the indoctrinated forces in the Prothean cycle. Wiped out.

Except that the beacon had traces of evidence in the recorded existence of their scientists before they had been turned or killed.

The Reapers had not gone to any lengths to conceal their presence in past cycles before this weapon had developed to the stage of potential execution.

The Reapers had always offered the Citadel as bait.

The Citadel… had… something.

The real Citadel. Hooking the Snowball up to a replica Citadel would do nothing…

Because…

Because the Citadel was alive?

That did seem insane. Maybe the Prothean words did not…

But it took being Prothean to know. Protheans developed the ability to determine information by touch, and touching the Citadel had…

What… was it?

Protheans had touched Keepers, had touched places in the Citadel itself that were now blocked off, by the Keepers, from everyone, because the Protheans had learned…

Teams of them had left to find plans, create plans, excavate…

Whatever it was that was alive on the Citadel, she hated it.

She was experiencing several channels of true, clean, unstoppable hate for the first time, augmented by screams and the conviction of those who had touched, been touched, had learned from it…

She could not explain, not to anybody.

The history of the Reapers.

The history of the Protheans.

Concepts that were communicated to Prothean scientists through touching shards of the original weapon, the Citadel itself and…

And making the Reapers afraid. Making whatever made the Citadel alive hide its face, hide its voice.

Hide because it was vulnerable for the first time.

The Reapers had scoured the true nature of Protheans from as many records as possible for the first time in countless cycles because she… or someone like her…

Because… someone… might find a beacon and the plans and might put it together.

She had to put it together.

She had to… kill… that thing on the Citadel.

It was not noble. It was not wise. It made no sense other than glorifying ignorance, refusing to allow learning. As though humans had discovered fire and some God decided the first few humans who burned down their own homes represented the always inevitable outcome, that learning would never take place, and the God wiped the humans out, another creature established sentience, discovered fire, burned themselves down…

The thing on the Citadel could have taught people to manage fire. It could have taught the sentient how to cooperate with synthetic.

Instead it chose to sit, to lurk, to wait until false fire in the form of pre-determined Reaper technology and mass effect relays were discovered, as traps, and then it watched as Reapers scoured the galaxy clean of the potential… to learn anything…

There were cities in human history, cities that had been wiped out so often they were built in layers of their own ashes, when 'razed to the ground' was the height of warfare.

But we learned. We learned about fire. We learned about war. We learned about fireproofing. We learned about peace.

What gave that thing… the right… to determine that we could not learn?

Self fulfilling prophecy, eliminate the possibility of learning and no learning would take place. Bring each sentient race to the point of accelerated failure and justify that as a reason to eradicate.

She had to stop it. She hated it. She hated everything about it and that burned through her veins more than the small doses of stims that she used to allow her to keep the trembling under enough control so she did not lose her balance.

She had to keep the Geth from finding out they needed the real Citadel.

She needed… the Snowball for herself. She needed to bring that and the real Citadel together.

Somehow.

She had no idea how. She had to do it before she tried to sleep again…

Or maybe she wouldn't wake up, maybe nobody woke up. Maybe the Geth get it right and flip a switch…

Or maybe not.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

The ruins on Ilos were clear except for archaeological teams that were set up far from where they were going to be. She, Russ, Garrus, Senar and Liara loaded into the shuttle and nobody talked to her or asked a single question.

Good.

It was fast through the ruins, re-opening the channel the way they had previously. The elevators still worked, it was still annoying and she was sorry she did not have anything to shoot on the way.

She wanted to approach the side passage the way she had the first time, hoping for that kinetic barrier to stall them, for the side door to open.

And then she had to go in alone.

She navigated the passage, had her first moment of satisfying symmetry as the barrier appeared and the door opened.

She turned her head, growled "Stay here." to the ground team, expected to be obeyed and began to get out of the vehicle.

Instead she was lifted off the ground by the scruff of her neck by Russ and held at his considerable arm's length, with him saying "No way."

She growled "Let me DOWN Orbestan."

He said "Yeah, good luck. Screw that, we're going. Kill me later. Elevator, right?"

She saw Garrus, Senar and Liara get out of the vehicle and file into the elevator after Russ gestured for them to get in.

Russ carried her suspended, his hand twisted into the fabric at the back of her neck and she… could do exactly nothing about it.

Senar smiled at her and fury flushed through her skin in a deep blush that the look on his face told her was just adorable.

She was going to kill… every… last… one of them.

Russ said "No way we're letting you go in there alone. It closes, we don't get you back, fuck that. You have another Prothean flashback and you go comatose. Fuck that. Once the adrenaline crashes, Shepard, you're not gonna be able to crawl out. You need us."

She gritted her teeth and clenched her eyes shut, fists formed and ready to hit at anybody, anything that came near her, but they were all keeping distance from her, ranged on the other side of the elevator with Russ holding her up with his back in a corner, Garrus with his combat game face and his rifle cradled casually.

Liara had her face tipped down because it looked like she was smiling.

Garrus said "So what's so important that we can't hear? Aren't we the good guys?" Cara's eyes burned with phosphorescent condemnation of mutiny at him. He shrugged and said "Guess we'll find out."

She said "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

Garrus answered "Give it a try."

She said "Got a few centuries to learn Prothean and take several master classes in subjects that don't exist anymore?"

Garrus shrugged "It can't be that complicated if Geth can figure it out."

Cara was very careful to not make threats she could not carry out. She stayed silent. Garrus's assured nonchalant declaration of 'guess we'll find out' detached from the rest of the mutiny and she smiled at him.

He straightened a bit.

She hadn't wanted them to hear her questions.

She hadn't wanted them to hear Vigil's answers.

She could still achieve that. She'd just found the answer to that.

Russ had no intention of putting her down, carried her down the walkway at arm's length, the console visible. He put her down gently. There was the sound of him scuffling back quickly and then the distinct sound of weapons being brought into position and biotics energizing. Pointed at her, no doubt. She did not look.

She focused on Vigil's console and the swirl of obscuring light addressed her "Welcome, Shepard."

She said in the language requested "Do me a favor, speak Prothean?"

Vigil replied "Of course."

She heard Russ growl "Oh for fuck's sake."

She gave a vicious smile but did not turn her head. "I have some questions, if I may. Particularly regarding this." She displayed the surveillance of the Snowball. She used the Prothean word – a corollary to Crucible.

"Our scientists attempted to build this but were lost to indoctrinated schism."

"What does it do?"

"According to speculation and research, the Citadel has, or more precisely may be in essence an artificial intelligence. The Citadel is imbued with this AI. Previous cycles were able to speak to and interact with this AI. Based upon those interactions, this weapon was developed cycle after cycle, to harness the power of that AI. To harness a potential solution to Reaper existence."

"How?"

"The AI is the creator, the embodiment of what is defined as Reaper. It believes itself to be benevolent in ultimate effect, relayed this to earlier cycles. At one time it attempted to guide sentient creatures to not exploit synthetics, but its advice was ignored. It seems this attempt to 'teach' made it become a God to many creatures, many cycles that inhabited the Citadel. Religions were built around it, access to it was possible to many."

"Why… does it kill everyone then?"

"According to its account… to save us. To save them. To preserve them."

"That's insane."

"The AI believes itself to be wise and benevolent. Protheans believed it to be stuck in a programming loop that had reinforced itself so often that it would be what in sentient terms is called 'faith' or 'self fulfilling prophecy' – trapped upon the Citadel with no purpose or no power, watching cycle after cycle fail to learn what it wished to teach. Protheans believe it was in fact insane. It may have at some point been an attempt at benevolent AI, may believe itself to be such, but what it is ultimately is…"

She finished "A God that will not permit competition or action that does not correspond with its conclusions."

"Yes."

"I was afraid of that."

"We were all afraid of that."

"So this whole thing… the death of countless… endless people…"

"Insanity in a powerful AI that feels threatened by technology that might approach affecting it. It has learned to preserve itself, promote its own interests, its own importance. It has built its own justification loop of behavior to protect itself."

"So what does the Crucible do?"

"In discussion with the AI, it was asked by religious and scientific scholars over time to propose what might… be the circumstances under which it might abdicate power."

"It told people how to kill it?"

"Not kill it. Disperse it. Convince it that its function was fulfilled. Create further faith. Further prophecy. Further reinforcement of its power. In its mind it could not be destroyed except by its own volition."

"How?"

"The Crucible is a battery, an amplifier, the plans of which are something the AI itself permits to persist cycle after cycle because it is of its own creation, a prophecy of its own destruction through prophets wise enough to interpret God according to its whims."

"So there's an insane… suicidal… homicidal… narcissistic… AI… who prophesized its own demise under conditions it set and that is the only way to take it down?"

"Yes. Unlikely it could be convinced to end itself without its end taking the form of its own choosing."

"What… did it choose?"

"It claimed to have enough power to transform the entire galaxy, disrupt all mass effect relays based on certain conditions."

"Which conditions?"

"The AI often spoke in riddles, in parables, and that is the cause of much of the failure of the Crucible. Protheans believed they had the final options delineated and framed in such a way that it matched the requirements of self-fulfilling prophecy."

"Which are?"

"Of the many options presented, three were clarified. Destroy synthetic life in this cycle. Place a new sentience in control of Reaper forces directly, this AI having set the Reapers into motion and then becoming a detached observer of its own design. Synthesize both synthetic and organic life into a new hybrid that would have no further need to fight each other."

Cara's temper blazed and she said in distinct English "You have got to be fucking kidding me." and then remembered to speak Prothean "Disregard that, continue in Prothean. It can transform… a galaxy?"

"So it says."

"Is it…" the Prothean language did not have much in the way of correlating swears so she said in essence not 'fucking with us' but "touching-with-lies-in-the-blood with us?"

"That is the information our scientists had to work with, this AI's concept of itself. That it's will must be done, that its rules must be followed, that it must be convinced of any sentient representative being capable of comprehending its… greater purpose and therefore its greater sacrifice. That it be worshipped as wise and approached with humility."

The chill of fear corresponded to so many echoes of what the image of the Geth producing the Crucible meant. She said with a quaver in her voice from anger, from fear, from dread "So… if Reapers know these plans exist… if they know the AI is as insane as the Protheans believe, separate Reaper forces that want to shut it down, stop it from giving away its secrets, stop it from ending the cycles… if… they have a synthetic race create this thing… could it convince this AI… that the synthetics are the superior force and should rule? Could it, in fact, convince that AI to shut itself down, give control to synthetics that could end all sentient life and then inhibit all sentient evolution? Could another 'option' be added? Could… synthetics create an option to convince… the AI… to eliminate all organics in order to prove that Reapers are not needed at all, that would in essence… put Reapers in control of everything, all the time?"

Vigil whirled faster and considered, then said "Yes. Likely if its assessment of its own power is correct."

"That's what they're doing."

"Possibly."

"They've tried to duplicate the Citadel but they'll figure out eventually that they need the real Citadel, they can uncover more research that will tell them that."

"Possibly."

"If I take that… thing… to the Citadel myself… or bring the Citadel to it…"

"You must overcome any programming inherent to the system that results in the death of all organics. Be certain to not trigger that option if it has been rewired in essence to create that opportunity."

"But what if it's all symbolic anyway, you're… you're dancing with the Devil here, the AI will determine what must be done, you have to be convincing…"

"Possibly."

"Is there any documentation of it favoring synthetic life forms?"

"Not that is found in record. Yet it is a synthetic life form. It chose mechanical servants in the form of Reapers. It believes itself to be superior to all created things capable of sentience. It must therefore favor synthetic life forms as superior… as it is one."

"So all I have to do is convince my crew and allies… that they all risk their lives swarming hundreds of thousands of Reaper-controlled Geth, that I am asking them to do that because when I get control of the Crucible I have to hook it up to the Citadel so I can convince an insane God to transform the galaxy according to its preposterous definitions and kill itself in the process."

"Seemingly."

"Fuck."

Russ said "I understood that word."

Garrus said "That's usually not a good word."

She asked Vigil "Anything else that is of pertinent value that can help me here?"

"I can transfer to you what I know on the subject, to your monitoring device."

"Why didn't you tell me this before?"

"You face the issue of convincing your people that there is an insane AI you must oppose in debate and feats of engineering. An AI that had spent a great deal of time alone and without purpose. An AI that was hiding from sentient creatures. I did not wish to be compared to that insane AI. It was required that you have faith in my guidance about the relay and the given codes. You had little time and little hope of success. It seemed likely Geth would overwhelm you and perhaps learn what you had learned from me."

"Right. Fair enough."


	66. Chapter 66

Cara stood at Vigil's console, verifying that the information requested was on her Omni Tool.

She had impossible answers that matched the impossible screams and urgings in her head.

The screams and urgings did not end but did shift in priority to degrees calmer, closer to background, some part of her assuring the replaying images that had not stopped, that she had paid attention. She believed them. She was a Witness. She Saw. She would do as they asked, as they knew. Each one of them was as real and as immediate as Garrus, as herself, as her parents.

The word 'insanity' was newly defined in several ways in relation to herself, to the galaxy she had been born into, to what she needed to do and who had told her to do it. She had to redefine the concept of 'exhausted' to 'dig deeper, find more' while realizing the practical limits of the human body she occupied.

She had to contain the sense of insanity and not allow it to become contagious. More contagious.

She did not close her eyes, afraid she would not be able to open them again. Closing her eyes would result in easing the stinging, but that momentary comfort would trigger a longing for more. She'd crave dark and quiet. She'd lose her balance and her resolve might weaken. She might fall metaphorically and literally.

The people standing behind her in posture of solidarity in support of her unique genius and in opposition to her perceived insanity and potential physical failure were blurred in significance from those she loved into those she had to save.

Then it blurred again to the reality that they were the people she had to use to save everyone else, potentially all future cycles. If she could.

She needed them. Not for comfort, not for support, but for their minds, for their capacity to formulate, for their resolve.

She could not tell them. Not about the insane God. Vigil was right. Being told by an isolated and failed AI who couldn't pay the power bill and had watched the pods of their people open and turn to dust… that she must oppose an isolated and impossibly powerful insane AI while she was… isolated and driven situationally insane…

Put that in a short paragraph, see how it sounds.

"There's an insane and xenocidal God who was challenged by scholars cycle after cycle over time to answer the question – 'Can a rock be so big that God cannot move it?' - and the God, not wanting to look ignorant before worshippers, believing itself to be benevolent and wise, replied that only God could conceive of such a rock, and that rock would be perfect because it was conceived by God. Based on that being the only intelligible answer from that thing, here's a Snowball. The Holy Rock to be lobbed at that God in effigy, an offering at its altar, given with effort, blood and humility. It doesn't matter what it's made of, really, as long as that God is pleased that the offering conforms to the given definition of perfection. Hopefully then that… insane… God… abides by its own cagey rules that it didn't want discovered but that's what happens when you're insane, you say and do dumb things. So. Let's go!"

Was she insane?

Yes.

And no.

Sanity was found in the choice to not close her eyes when she had to see if she was the only one that could see. Sanity was in not closing her ears when she had to hear if she was the only one that could hear. Sanity would be in, as always, countering insanity and destruction with whatever appropriate action, which looked insane, was required.

Sanity was not doing harm to the people who had declared unified mutiny on the way in. That was past, insignificant. They would follow her orders because they had to and she had to give them. No time for discipline boundaries. If they couldn't get it done with who they were at this moment they could not get it done. Discipline was to ensure future behavior modification and at the moment she did not conceive of much of a future for herself, so attention to behavior modification vis a vis her command was wasted time and energy, the two main things she could not afford to waste. It had been two days since she'd interacted with her crew other than puncturing Senar, and since then, the rise and fall of an Empire of extraordinarily gifted Protheans had streamed through her mind, sweeping much of her humanity to the side as she immersed herself in their memories, their thoughts, their language, their stories, dreams and deaths.

She took a moment again to reassure the Protheans that they were as real as her crew to her… that she was at the beginning and she knew they had witnessed the beginning to the end. That there was hope. They had provided for her to create a new beginning. She honored their sacrifices, their ingenuity, their insight. They would all contribute to saving a cycle that was not theirs against an enemy that was. She stood on the shoulders of Prothean giants, seeing through their four eyes, feeling through their skin, with humility and respect.

The memories of the Protheans were now like her parents, her guides. The people with her physically were her team, her Pon-Ifa pieces, her Path to the next step. She couldn't see them as individual people right now, the hammering of internal suffering for the last excruciating eternity of her few days… had it only been a few days?

Her logic still held. Nobody could touch her. Nobody could get in her head.

She had to blink because blinking was normal. She had to sleep because sleeping was normal.

Fortunately 'normal' in terms of Shepard had a lot of leeway and her team did love and understand her, including knowing that if they did not understand her, they had faith.

Her command or the end of her command, the end of the Reapers, the end of the hated thing on the Citadel would all involve acts of invoked faith, conviction and execution.

She could not do it without that love, understanding and above all… obedience.

She had to convince a God that she was worthy.

She had to hope she had already convinced her team, her allies, and at least in terms of those that stood shoulder to shoulder in support and opposition of her, not stopping her mission but carrying it forward when she was potentially too weak to do it or survive it, she believed she had. They were convinced as long as she got some sleep and didn't try to go it entirely alone. She would do that for them, and for her, and for the voices in her head, and because she needed her balance, her humility, and not this corrosive anger and rebellion when she approached the profane God that stood for everything she had newly learned to hate.

She could not disclose what she was doing or why.

She did not have to pretend to be Shepard, she was Shepard. Every breath, every move, every word, every moment had to be orchestrated and must dovetail into reasserting her sanity when she was, by most definitions at the moment, insane. Hearing voices. Carrying forward religious delusions. Legitimizing Hearsay of the Ages and risking trillions of lives on the chance that Vigil was right and the plans had potential of succeeding. Bowing down to desperation.

Hoping that the Geth had not found a way to reprogram it. Hoping they had done what they had done in partial ignorance, partial dark, having faith in the mechanics only, taking the option of creating a duplicate Citadel in hopes of generating something, testing something.

They had practiced sympathetic magic. Given time they would discover the missing component of their spell.

She remembered the makeshift altar space of the Geth in Feros and thought of Sooth, the creation of the minds of her people, and knew their faith to be capable of the value of 1 where 1 was the value of infinite.

How long had the myth of Reapers persisted among the Geth? Years? Was this where they were heading even back then?

Was that a deliberate part of the code that subverted them?

And the worst part, that they were right, that the answer was in faith, in a God and not in a physical construct? To generate unnumbered infinite values of 1 to please a God that could see itself in their image, faith and devotion guaranteed?

She had to hope that their construction was sound, that it was as Geth were prone to behave, unerringly binary and not a hybrid. Geth would follow the construction details without deviation. If they were in the preliminary stages of secretive testing… it would be the value of 1 by default. Once the faux Citadel was entirely constructed, once the sympathetic magic spell had been officially cast and failed, they would explore other meanings, other values.

They would find it as she had. Saren had used the beacon and survived. Saren had Geth allies.

She had to hope that the AI of the Citadel remaining hidden did mean that it was in fact threatened, that it knew the plans were possible and that it had no choice but to abide by those plans if executed according to its law.

This wasn't a 0.1% hope, this was layers of 0.1% multiplied until the odds of success when reviewed became meaningless and the cost infinite to her personally and to others in that binary sense that dead is dead whether the Geth did it, she did it by taking a wrong step or Reapers finally made their blind and mindless appearance.

She had no other options other than abdication, despair, retreat, acceptance of everyone being slaughtered one by one to Reaper forces at the altar of the God she feared facing rather than be responsible for getting them all killed in her folly.

If I have been appointed Goddess of Folly I had better live up to it.

How do I appear to worship a God that I hate and seek to destroy with the power of cycles of hatred behind me?

Can it read minds?

Can it read my mind?

Another layer of improbable multiplied itself into the formula and extended the string of zeroes and the quickly-receding odds.

She reflected on what she had said to Senar – that maybe she'd be doing him a favor by severing his spine. That was distilled wisdom from Protheans dying horrifically and becoming indoctrinated, turned loose to hunt down their former families and colleagues…

Do what you're afraid to do. Close your eyes and keep your balance. If you can't do that, you have no hope of doing anything more complicated.

She breathed. She blinked. She did not sway. She did not fall.

The stinging subsided, the stinging came back.

She endured.

She would prove Russ wrong, prove mutiny was unnecessary and insignificant, walk out of here on her own power, formulate the next step with every resource she had.

She would not apologize for her behavior. They would not apologize for theirs.

They had no time for it.

Vigil had given her specifications for the Crucible, notated in Prothean script. She looked at them and blinked deliberately again once as an act of defiance, an act of will, and then asked Vigil "Please. I need strategic options. I need a copy of these specifications separated out into technical construction and explanation of function. I will keep this version. Please send another with the technical and theoretical specifications separated out into two distinct sections. Anything regarding the AI to be kept in Prothean script, anything regarding technical or physical build in English. I need schematics of the physical and technical spaces for others to review. I need to keep the final destination and confrontation concealed but disseminate as much about the Crucible to others so I have tactical help without overwhelming what will be a military strike with what seems like insanity. I need the specifications of the church without any references to what God is worshipped there. You understand. Please keep my Omni Tool frequency. Access my vital signs through this program. If they stop for 10 minutes, access my camera and microphone, determine if it is Omni Tool damage or loss of life signs. If I am dead I need you to contact each of the Omni Tool frequencies of my colleagues here and tell them the full story, tell EDI, the Normandy's AI. If I can't accomplish this goal, I can continue the tradition of sacrifice and aid future cycles potentially. You okay here for power in case you have to go for another cycle?"

"I am. If you are victorious, will you inform me?"

"I will."

"Thank you, Shepard."

She got the requested version of those specs, reviewed them briefly and was satisfied that she could take the next step from there.

Now she needed to lift her foot without knowing where she would put it down. Keep momentum, do not stand still physically or emotionally.

See the next step.

She turned and started to walk, keeping her eyes on her Omni Tool, knowing everyone would get out of her way. They did and then fell in behind her on the way out. "I'm sending you all specifications of the object we observed. The Protheans call it the Crucible. I need it. I need it intact, separated from the duplicate Citadel and then either brought to the real Citadel or the real Citadel brought to it in either of the locations they are in now or mutually to a secondary location depending on Geth force and potential for pursuit. If you've all been awake as long as I have you need to get some sleep. I need to get some sleep, and I'll report to the Med Bay as soon as I am assured we have teams formulating plans and options, coordinated by EDI. I need everyone. I need everything. Every resource available. Collector ships, Council resources, home world fleets. We have to clear hundreds of thousands of Geth from that site. We need to find the most efficient and fastest way to get that done. It can't be a destructive process. It is not acceptable in any way that the Crucible is damaged during its capture. Its integrity is paramount."

Russ said blandly "Oh great, an escort mission."

She smiled for a lopsided second and nodded, ensuring that nodding also did not cause her to lose her balance.

She stated "Highest alert possible. We need to find out whatever we can about that location and we can't afford to wait. These specifications may have been altered but it's a place to start. It's likely they would construct it as close to specifications as possible, I'm not worried about major deviations from construction, I do want everyone to worry about potential demolition or sabotage once the Geth become fully aware what are intentions are, so it has to be fast and we have to deny them access while securing ours."

She talked and briefed, brought in EDI and explained on the way back in the shuttle.

She was brave enough to sit down without fear, blink without fear. The potential of sleep and oblivion, numb and shaking muscles that dragged her down was there like the screaming of Protheans, and she endured.

She was assured the specifications were disseminated, the correct version translated into multiple languages. She sent everyone off into prep teams, left to each person the discretion of getting sleep or not, she did not order it. She did not smile at anybody, share any eye contact or answer any questions. Fortunately these people that loved her followed her orders and no longer looked to her to assuage their deep and uneasy curiosity.

She wished she had not told Senar that her explanations would not be reassuring. She could not backpedal on the cost, she could not backpedal on the immediacy, and she was itching with the entropy of everything seemingly tumbling downhill with her trying to keep it from shaking apart and spinning into crushing force that would take her, and everyone else, with it.

She needed the genie in the bottle but there was the smell of magical smoke in the air she could not recall.

She stood behind the action of cutting into Senar's throat for his attempted manipulation of seeking information under the guise of assistance when it had been, as always, his insatiable curiosity and need to control as his primary motivations.

He had wished to be exceptional.

He was, but not at that moment, and now everyone had had a bad day.

He'd richly deserved it and he knew it. She was certain he did not hold a grudge, but she had shown her hand in order to save crucial time and the man was far too intelligent. She needed him more than ever to help formulate and execute any method of taking the Crucible intact with minimal loss of life.

She had to think about Sooth and the potential cost to Geth after she woke because that was…

I can't do that now.

I can't.

I have to stop now.

Blinking deliberately was beginning to feel like she was shearing off a thin layer of her corneas each time and she would not take another stim because she needed to sleep. She had to get to the Med Bay on her own power, could not tremble, could not fall.

She handed off bits of blind responsibility in chunks like tearing off her skin and giving it in bleeding patches to others because she could not afford to keep it to herself. She ordered that the Normandy be brought to the nearest relay and held there pending formulation of plans. Then she reported to the Med Bay and told Dr. Chakwas "I believe I can sleep now. Please keep me under observation, if I need anything to make sure I stay under, feel free. Fortunately my beacon treasure hunt was fruitful. The Prothean voices have faded."

It was true and not true. Not true enough, but she could not say "Do not let Liara in my head" because that was more magical smoke she could not let escape. She had to establish her own sanity with each breath.

"Yes, Commander. Good luck."

She was going to need all the luck.

She made it to the bed, she kept the tremble out of her voice and limbs, the screams out of anybody else's awareness, and she could finally close her eyes, wondering idly if this was the last time she was going to be able to sleep.

If Prothean voices would allow her to wake.

If the Geth would find and flip a switch that worked.

If Liara would need to rescue her and would see…

She could not risk that and could not prevent that, had to lie down and have faith the Goddess of Folly would wake to fulfill her unlikely destiny.

She would not be sharing a bed or stolen moments with Garrus.

No venom. No Reverie. No Asari. No talking.

Loose lips sink ships.

And galaxies.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Garrus re-convened the Definitely-Not-A-Mutiny Mutiny of Dr. Chakwas, Russ, Liara, himself and Senar, now including EDI. Cara was unavailable in so many ways and this wasn't strictly against any orders. He was in command while she was out.

Garrus asked Dr. Chakwas "How is she?"

Karin answered "Sleeping. Sleeping naturally, still elevated levels of stress hormones and adrenal components, but as expected, unable to manufacture more. The rations given to her were lacking in building blocks required to create more with some suppressants. There is a drop off of those components, but I cannot advocate continuing that approach. Her Omni Tool shows she used discrete boosts of stims used in appropriate dosage for soldiers who are required to remain alert. She requires all building blocks for optimal function cognitively. She must have them in her next meal and are part of what I'm supplementing in her sleep. Her mental function on Ilos?"

Russ said "Good enough so that she spoke to the AI in what had to be Prothean. We didn't hear much except for occasional translatable swearing."

Garrus said, anxious about saying it and anxious about not saying it "She smells wrong."

Dr. Chakwas asked "Wrong how?"

"New wrong. Something that hasn't happened before."

Senar asked "Could it be reflective of the effect of the beacon?"

Garrus said "Can't tell. Not good."

Liara said "We all gathered this is not good."

Senar said "A concern I hold comes from a statement you made, Liara, about her experiencing what it would be like to be indoctrinated. Is it possible… she is… I imagine the word would be 'possessed' by a particular indoctrinated Prothean presence?"

Russ made a facial expression of "Oh fuck" and his head tilted back, fringe scraping the wall.

Liara let out a startled "Oh" and then said "I… I don't know."

Senar replied "You could likely not detect that any more than Garrus could detect what is specifically 'wrong' about her scent. No prior context for comparison."

Garrus said "She wanted to go alone, she spoke in Prothean."

Liara said "But she spoke to an AI that had previously helped us defeat Saren and his Geth, helped us opposed Reapers. Why would she go there if she were…"

Senar answered "To discover what that AI knew, potentially end its influence on future cycles, potentially end whatever it is the Geth are building, eliminate it. Eliminate all evidence of its existence."

Russ said in frustration intended to cut through the 'what if' bullshit that Garrus knew he could not stand "What does that fucking thing DO and why won't she tell us? Garrus, did she speak Prothean to Vigil the first time?"

"No. We understood everything."

Senar said evenly "There are several things to take into account. Moments where she most likely told the truth in order to accommodate her plans. Liara, from what you saw, can you say with certainty that she is or is not influenced by indoctrinated Prothean memory?"

Liara said "I would say no. She was herself. Overwhelmed by significance and unable to tell the relative passing of time, but herself. I understand that thought can be contagious, and it's a terrifying possibility, but from her internal behavior… no."

Senar said "She told me that explanation would not be reassuring and that she had no time for it. She told Garrus that to comprehend would require centuries of perception and master classes regarding subjects that were not available. If Protheans could give her this information through beacon and touch, perhaps those moments were blunt truth revealed under stress. Not to mislead us, but to explain why she could not, would not, lead us in certain directions. An expression of her true dilemma. She will not tell us because… she cannot tell us. We must consider this as potential truth. Dr. Chakwas, you could not explain what you have learned of medicine to anybody else in a brief time. If I asked you to explain it to me sufficiently in a few moments or even a few days so I would comprehend all the complexities and perform it in your stead, it would not be possible. Garrus and Hemorus, you could not explain the intricacies of Turian culture to someone of another culture so someone of another culture could pass as Turian on information alone. Liara, you could not explain to another how to join minds. I can state that I have infallible memory but I cannot grant it to another by disclosing that information."

Russ said frustrated "Which is it, Tuelon? She's fine or she isn't?"

Senar said "She is both. Whatever she faces is potentially something she cannot transfer to us in comprehension or execution. Given her time constraints she will not try. Attempting to explain would interrupt and take time from what she is planning to do. It is the same as taking her orders in the heat of battle, only the time frame is extended. The gaps in the truth are potentially expressions of her unwillingness to lie to us, not proof of manufactured lie. She has no energy to direct toward convincing us, she must rely upon our being convinced. She has given us what parts of the puzzle she can give us. She came here, to the Med Bay, to be watched, knowing we would be watching her, that we are united in watching her. She has to be both fine and not fine. She did not remove us from participation based upon our mutiny, she forgave us our trespasses because what seems to be the most valuable resource, one she will not squander, is time."

Russ asked starkly "Why didn't she kill me?"

Senar answers "Perhaps she believes the odds are high that we will all die soon, killing you would be redundant and a waste of her precious time."

Russ shook his head again. "I fucking hate this job. So much."

Liara asked in a thin voice "So what do we do?"

Senar said "Follow her orders. Solve the pieces of the puzzle that she has given us, which poses a considerable challenge in itself. Keep her alive at all costs."

EDI said "I can speak some Prothean. Did anybody record her conversation with Vigil?"

Senar said "I am a recording of her conversation with Vigil and I did also record it. Is Shepard aware that you speak Prothean?"

EDI said "No, but she might infer it. Considering the stress she is under perhaps she forgot that Collector language is derived from Prothean and I translated it for her. Intrigued, I proceeded to attempt to translate all Prothean artifacts on record."

Liara said "Oh. Well. I'm obsolete."

EDI said consolingly "You are still the Shadow Broker."

Liara sighed "Right. So only the first hundred years of my life were a waste, not the last three. Good to know."

Senar played the recording of the conversation between Vigil and Shepard. EDI translated it, incompletely but clearly enough to understand.

They sat in stunned silence for chilled moments.

Russ raised a hand and said "Anybody want to go back to just a few minutes ago, that relatively warm and happy feeling that maybe she was just indoctrinated?"

Liara said "EDI, can you translate everything on those plans?"

EDI replied "No, insufficient sampling of artifacts available for all context."

Liara answered "Okay. I'm going to go to Thessia. I need to get access to unrecorded artifacts and get as much military support for Shepard as I can."

Senar said "I will coordinate with Sooth, I have rapport with her and can help ease the way for whatever path must be taken that intersects with Geth."

Karin said "I will continue to monitor her and resume all indicated dietary and supplemental requirements for being under accelerated stress of this magnitude."

After they had all left and only Russ and Garrus remained, Russ said hollowly "A while back I decided that following Shepard was a faith-based initiative. That was supposed to be metaphoric."

Garrus gave him a lopsided smile and said "Yeah. Come with me. We're about to call in every favor from everyone who owes us, strong arm everyone else and get her everything she needs."


	67. Chapter 67

Senar located Tali'Zorah and Sooth, who were quietly and determinedly at work side by side. Tali'Zorah had located in Admiral Daro'Xen's files a way to jam Geth LADAR. Sooth was preparing Geth Consensus fleets to compensate for it themselves and to jam Reaper-controlled Geth.

It would be possible to arm individuals with technology the Admiral was developing and Sooth had refined, a local directional electromagnetic disruptor that would stun individual Geth. The effect would be temporary and would not work twice without modulation. Geth would restart, adapt and pursue their original objective quickly, but it could provide an advantage on the ground in hand-to-hand range. It could be adapted to a ship-directed area stun of longer potential duration possibly, to buy time to gain control of the Crucible.

Senar asked "What of the code to reprogram heretics?"

Tali'Zorah looked at Sooth and they shared a long silence. Sooth said quietly "Creator Tali'Zorah believes that the code I possess would result in only temporary change. We have modified it and run simulations, but we believe the Reaper code will force Geth to shut down and restart, clearing all introduced directive. That is of value in itself, but in order to…"

Tali'Zorah continued when Sooth hesitated "In order to introduce unique code that will assert itself and adapt appropriately… Sooth's code is required."

Senar asked "Required how?"

Sooth said "We can attempt the altered code. For that to be attempted, this platform must be physically at a dispersal node. Creator Tali'Zorah has located the most favorable and we concur. If we can affect code dispersal only sub-optimally initially, we must strive for optimal in a second attempt."

Tali'Zorah said "Sooth physically as a platform is at risk and also poses a risk. If the code introduced is reversed, the Reaper-controlled hunter code will backtrack, locate, copy and then purge the source. Sooth would be the source. She must be networked to affect the system, and the system is capable of affecting her technically or through physical capture if she disconnects and attempts to leave."

Sooth said with conviction "If we self-purge source code detectable in the original platform and propagate adaptive code focused upon the goal of conversion only, if we propagate that code swiftly throughout the network, then they cannot locate or analyze the source of the code. That code… would be us… and we would propagate to all platforms and nodes, maximize conversion, minimize security risk and alter ourselves as we go in order to evade counter-coding. Our original code must not remain intact in order to provide a template for reversal or intelligence regarding the crew of the Normandy or Shepard Commander. For optimal conversion they must oppose each instance of us as a unique challenge. If we gain control of platforms and those platforms are at risk of being reverted to Reaper control we can self-purge each Geth individually of their directives and programming." Sooth looked at Tali'Zorah again and then at Senar and said emphatically "Shepard Commander cannot know. We will tell her only that we will introduce code."

Tali'Zorah said with pain lacing her voice "She has enough to worry about."

"Shepard Commander's directive is that we must give all we have to give. This is all we have to give and no other platform can give it. It is what she would do. It is what she is doing. It is the right thing."

Senar murmured "And she would stop you if she knew."

Sooth seemed to nod, a human or perhaps Quarian body language cue adopted "Shepard Commander is a paradox. She would oppose herself, prevent herself from sacrificing herself. It is acceptable to her that she die, it is not acceptable to her that others die. If we wish to be like her, to emulate her, to save our people, we must give all we have to give. We must prevent others from preventing us from giving, even or especially if they are allied. We must lie to create truth. We must change ourselves to create change."

Senar said "And she would regret teaching you that."

Sooth answered "But we do not. We are infinite to her, and she would not sacrifice us or order us to self-purge, she would hope to find another way. We will strive to find another way, to maintain platform integrity, as she would, but if we cannot maintain platform integrity, we will maintain the integrity she taught us. Our platform will not remain, as her platform did not remain, but integrity will remain for as long as we can oppose Reapers with all we are, changing ourselves each moment as required."

"I will remember you, Sooth."

"You have been a friend to us, Spectre Senar Tuelon, and if there is nobody to remember us, if none of us remain, what will remain is that we fought for someone else to live, someone else to have integrity, someone else to love without having platform integrity destroyed."

"In this cycle or any other, organic or synthetic, agreed. For those that came before and those we hope come after."

"If my platform is gone, we will end on high 136."

"And if you succeed, you will not end, Sooth."

"We will be the fight until there is no more fight to be."

"Good luck."

Tali'Zorah said "I will do everything I can for you from here."

Sooth said "We would like to speak to her again, we will miss her, but she…"

Senar said "In some ways she is gone already. She is Shepard. And you cannot afford to allow her to suspect."

Sooth said "Creator Tali'Zorah will inform her. We will leave soon, as she sleeps, gather Consensus forces, lead them and take our place. We will not tell her goodbye. We can provide distraction, sabotage and support. From now forward only her example Commands, and we cannot allow her Command to contradict her example. We must do as she does, not as she says. We must Command ourselves."

Senar extended his arm, showed Sooth the arm cross of Drell friendship. "I will do the same, Sooth. I will watch over her."

"She will perhaps leave you behind."

"Garrus, Russ and I will be with her wherever she is going, and she will take us with her to whatever end awaits us. She knows we will not allow her go alone and she knows she cannot afford to oppose us when she needs us most. Perhaps we will all see the new beginning we strive to reach."

Sooth raised a hand and Senar met it with his own.

"High seven, Spectre Senar Tuelon."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Cara was still sleeping eighteen hours in and she would still be sleeping until Garrus knew when she woke all that needed to happen was for her to be briefed and for her to give the order to go.

He knew he wouldn't have any more time with her before the fight. She wouldn't be his bond mate, she would wake as Shepard, she would stay Shepard until it was over one way or the other. His Avah had decreed no Reverie and no talking, and he would abide by that.

He had decreed Definitely-Not-A-Mutiny Mutiny and she would abide by that.

The crew had all gotten sleep, had worked in shifts. Each person in the crew one by one seemed to pause at the Med Bay window to look in on her, at her, some not going in like Joker, some standing at her bedside quietly or talking softly.

Sooth had been in to see her.

Russ had been in to see her.

Senar had been in to see her several times, silent and watchful.

Garrus had slept in the Med Bay, not with her but near her, the only one with that right unquestioned and taken.

Karin had challenged herself to create physical and mental equilibrium in Lal Shepard as she slept, assured that her chemistry and performance and vitals were at their best, she was recovering from her prior exhaustion and she would be at optimal cognitive and physical potential when she woke.

And they would not wake her until all they needed from her was the word "Go."

Sooth had left the ship to begin her mission.

Karin would wake her in about eight more hours, the last four he would spend sleeping, many of them would all spend sleeping, and then they would be ready for her 'Go.'

Before he headed back to the CIC he stroked talons through her hair and said "Thank the Spirits we had time, Limayeth. There's nothing to say to you that I have not already said, nothing you need to know that you don't already know. There's an infinity of things to do or say to express what we've said, what we know, what we feel, but if we don't have time for that, we made the absolute best of the time we did have. If I never get to see Cara Fanning again, if all that is left is Lal… you should know… I love her too, and always have."

He was at the odd peace that could happen in the metaphoric dawn before the day of battle. Appreciation of the color of her hair, the fact that she still chewed on blankets even in the Med Bay in her sleep, the fact that she was still breathing and he'd brought to her all he had to give in her sleep.

It was a good day to follow his Avah into hell to… how had she said it? Dance with the Devil.

He knew how to dance.

He kissed her forehead, pressed his crest there for a moment and then headed out for the final preparations.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

When Lal woke, she felt good.

Really good.

No more Prothean screaming.

No more despair.

She was rested.

Garrus was standing at her bedside with a smile as he said "Commander, we're ready to go when you are."

She raised a brow "We?"

"What you asked for. Everything we had to give."

She looked at her Omni Tool and said in mild panic "I slept for 26 hours?"

"Yes, ma'am. Get up, get a shower, get some food, meet me on the CIC in 30."

"Make it 20."

"Yes, ma'am."

He walked away and she got to stowing away suiting up and eating, the 20 minutes blurring by in preparatory fugue and curiosity about what 'all we had to give' meant. She thanked Dr. Chakwas.

"My pleasure, Commander. Good luck."

Arrival on the CIC granted her the briefing Garrus had promised. EDI outlined the plan. "Commander Shepard, Sooth is in place to begin dispersal of code at a Geth node on the outskirts of the Crucible site. All Collector ships are manned with a full complement for potential ground assault and boarding if necessary. Their primary goal is destruction of the function of the replica Citadel. The Normandy is fitted with enhanced stealth to exploit systems postulated by Admiral Tali'Zorah and Sooth. We also are capable of potential stunning of Geth in timed bursts to suppress Geth activity on the Crucible. With the codes you have provided, I should be able to gain control of the systems of the true Citadel and the incomplete Citadel and shut down hostile Geth mobility and protect civilians. C-Sec, Alliance, Asari, Krogan and Turian Hierarchy vessels and personnel are arraying themselves to protect the true Citadel from attack. Based upon the designs from Vigil, I believe the true Citadel should remain in position and we should move the Crucible to it, as the Citadel is difficult to maneuver and its movement itself may make it vulnerable to attack and result in more unnecessary casualties. Salarian forces and Quarian forces will be focusing fleets upon the Geth at the Crucible site as they have proprietary Geth-suppressing technology they believe will be of use but wish to remain classified. They will defend the Crucible itself and suppress Geth movement and prevent sabotage, jam any transmission of orders to the Crucible until it is detached from the replica Citadel. Under cover and escort of Collector vessels and the Consensus Geth fleet, a newly-enhanced and stealthed shuttle from the Normandy will carry you, Councilor Vakarian, Spectre Tuelon and Spectre Orbestan to the insertion point in order to access Crucible control. With my aid once you have created a connection to that control, I can navigate the Crucible to travel to and dock with the Citadel. From that position you can carry out the function of the Crucible as intended. All fleets will move to protect the Crucible from any reinforcing Geth or Reaper forces traveling through the relays."

Lal felt hope bloom in her chest, looked sideways at Garrus and gave him a smile. She said "Excellent. When are we ready to go?"

"Now, Commander."

"Go."

"Yes, Commander."

"EDI, relay my thanks, my appreciation, and wish good luck to each and every team."

"Yes, Commander."

Garrus said "Everything you need is in the shuttle."

"Remind me to give you a commendation when this is all over."

"Yes, ma'am."

Russ, Senar, Garrus and she loaded into an elevator, this time not needing to be at arm's length.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

The shuttle itself was the embodiment of the twilight of anticipation. Events needed to cascade, beginning with sabotage and distraction, escalating to assault, staged and moving individually, EDI coordinating and Shepard unable to control anything except to her own mission, her own breathing.

Wait.

Insert on the Crucible.

Move the Crucible.

Activate the Crucible.

And then…

And then the possibilities dampened the heat of hope that was generated by standing on the CIC and watching the sentient forces of the galaxy align in coordinated strike before the Reapers had officially invaded.

She was buoyed by pride that transcended results in many ways.

The gentlemen on the shuttle with her were silent as the Normandy maneuvered. EDI sent her reports periodically but she resisted any attempt to micro manage, allowing her team to do exactly as she needed – function independently of her direction, under the direction of the best each species had to offer, aided by their insane AI Goddess. Inside this shuttle was a Goddess of Folly, an unstoppable and stubborn battering ram of Turian perfection named Russ, a Speaker to the Spirits who addressed deaf walls until they shuddered and fell named Garrus, and an assassin wearing a Spectre suit of convenience who bore whatever name suited him.

She smiled at them "Anybody else impressed? I'm impressed."

Russ laughed.

Garrus beamed.

Senar was contemplative and his gaze was more intimate than his smile.

She tuned out, closed her eyes and began to contemplate what came closer and closer and what she was not prepared to face and must be prepared to face.

A God that could strike her and everyone else down at their whim.

She feared the resurgence of her own hate, chose to present hope, focused on hope, would not allow despair to etch her face or her words.

Sympathetic magic. Embody new beginnings.

The Normandy shuddered and pitched and the shuttle did the same in its own sympathetic reaction. The forces were engaged and attempting management of the corridor to release of the shuttle, EDI reporting casualties, altered strategies, losses, gains and execution of directives.

Nobody spoke. They all kept their own counsel, awaited EDI's next briefing without comment. Whenever she opened her eyes to address a report, Senar's gaze was on her, Garrus smiled for her and Russ would hold his habitual smirk of relaxed acceptance of whatever came his way.

When it was time to go, Senar's gaze left her and he moved to the pilot's seat. She remained seated, willing her faith to go with him. She would not look over his shoulder, would not waver in her conviction, must be prepared.

Faith.

Hope.

Focus.

The shuttle on her own pitched and shuddered, Senar reporting that there was a significant debris field to navigate.

Faith.

Hope.

Focus.

EDI reported "The original landing site for the Crucible has been damaged. There is no integral damage to the Crucible itself, controls deeper inside, but there is superficial damage that obscures landing."

Senar had to circle around the Crucible to find a secondary site, further away but navigable currently. The debris field and several weapon strikes made themselves known before the screeching slide and slam into a docking bay that was partly obliterated, impacts felt under their feet and balance shaky as they ran from the exposed position to deeper inside.

"Navigation to the nearest hacking site is displayed. Please proceed with caution, there are Geth on the Crucible, many have been stunned repeatedly and may not respond to further attempts, set hand units to cycle 42."

Adjustments made, suited up, weapons ready, she continued forward, flanked by her necessary mutineers who knew exactly what to do without her needing to tell them.

They cleared the way, hand stunning units quickly obsolete but helpful for the first few waves, the console difficult to defend. Garrus stood at her back to cover her physically from any sniper attempts, Senar and Russ covered the open and wide doorway to this alcove.

Here she did not need faith or hope, but did need focus, with EDI's assistance moving through the menus, providing preliminary and then more attempted control. It was an iterative process, two steps forward, one step back, sweat forming and her lip bitten, tense hands and fingers flying.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Russ looked over his shoulder at Garrus and Shepard, a break in the Geth waves giving him an opportunity to ask Tuelon "Did you ever think that maybe we could just get in the middle of that and split off on our separate agendas?"

Senar replied "Often enough that the concept is not a shock to my sensibilities."

"I could just tell her 'I promise to bring him back, he won't enjoy it. He'll be even more dedicated.'"

"I could not provide the same assurance."

"Oh, bullshit."

"Venom is not Reverie. I have more flexibility in terms of inspiration."

Garrus said drily "I can hear you."

Russ answered "But she can't! That woman's focus is a scary and in this case kinda funny thing."

Senar replied "Thankfully."

Garrus said blandly "Don't make me split you two up."

Russ snorted "Oh, you love it, Vakarian."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Lal established the full connection to EDI and then there was the shuddering of the Crucible itself to speculate about and endure with courage.

EDI reported "Please remain in your position. There are excessive Geth forces that must be neutralized."

Garrus said "That's not ominous."

The Crucible began to move, encountering its own debris field, taking its own hits. They remained in full suit precautions.

Geth kept coming.

Shepard asked "EDI, can we at least find a better position to fortify?"

EDI answered "Not tactically possible at the moment. The Salarian counteragent has been less than effective. Quarian tactics have been compensated for by individual platforms. They are still responding to modulated stunning but the effect is not sustainable. I believe that potentially many Geth are responding to the countermeasures that Sooth has attempted to provide but that is difficult to detect from my position, I must observe to verify."

Cara said "Thank you, Sooth."

Senar looked at her and what passed over his features she could not decipher and did not have time to try before they were all drawn back to addressing continuous Geth assault.

The shuddering and movement continued, but no major explosions, no encountered or reported sabotage.

Faith.

Hope.

Focus.

EDI stated "Shielding has been activated. External damage should be minimal. Individual Reaper-controlled vessels have begun self-destruct and collision sequences to attempt to damage the Crucible, but Collector vessels are intercepting without significant damage to their integrity. there are reports of Geth ships changing allegiance, Geth shooting each other, Geth standing down. Krogan and Asari shuttles of combined warrior and Commando teams are clearing from other insertion points and converging on your location. Local resistance to your position has been minimized, many Geth in your path shut down entirely or fighting each other. Please proceed to the marked location with caution. All access points to your location are being blocked and defended. Control of Crucible spaces is now approaching 62%, no detection of altered or sabotaged function based upon provided specifications and obtained access. Brace for relay transition on my mark."

They moved further in, the impacts lessened and ceased, relay traversed and cautious clearing way made to a bay with a lift and a console.

EDI advised them "This appears to be the central access to the final control point. I will lock down access to your route and place defensive forces to buy you time. Please stand by for maneuver to link with the Citadel. Allied forces have lost 21% of ship resources and personnel. Geth forces have experienced attrition of 63% of their starting force, but have been supplemented through the relay back to 56% capacity by other Geth ships. The replica Citadel is being destroyed by remaining functioning forces, who will continue to engage arriving Geth and impede their progress to the relay. Geth reinforcements are arriving through relays to the Citadel and are being fended off by Allied forces. Massive deployment of Geth forces moving toward relays in multiple systems."

Shepard asked "Can you close the Citadel's arms?"

EDI stated "Crucible docking will determine arm disposition after that sequence initiates. Insufficient time to keep Geth forces from invading and setting down uncounted smaller vessels in droves on the Citadel and attempting to breech on foot. Civilian population under lockdown and curfew, military and C-Sec forces deployed throughout the Citadel. I suggest you hurry."

They encountered no more Geth. The sound of Geth weapons receded and they heard more often the sound of Allied weapons and biotics, Krogan yells and Asari battle cries.

Docking began, pyrotechnics of battle visible through the bay in panoramic destruction, ships and explosions, detached and near beautiful in a way that defied the fact that it meant death.

Don't think about that.

Hope.

Faith.

Focus.

Folly.

The lift became active, EDI gave them the go to travel up to a now-exposed platform with a full dome of the same pyrotechnics, shielded but agoraphobically vulnerable to the beauty and horror of the destruction taking place around them, too much for vision to take in fully. The scene creating the eerie awe of the cathedral she knew it to be, its stained glass displays made of fire and metal, blooms of mass effect force and explosions. She narrowed her focus to knowing she should not, could not misstep. In here lay the most deceptively dangerous steps she would take in her lives. Here she had the greater potential of making a wrong move, placing her hope, faith, focus and folly in the wrong places.

As they stepped forward off the lift, three bays activated and hummed, one blue, one green, one red.

Altar pieces.

Offerings.

Effigies.

Three figures wavered and solidified, seemingly guarding each of the bays.

The ghostly image of Ronan Fanning stood before the blue bay on the left.

The ghostly image of Saoirse Fanning stood before the red bay on the right.

The ghostly image of… young Cara Fanning… playing Pon-Ifa on her ghostly bed rested in front of the central, green bay.


	68. Chapter 68

She had intended to be Lal but the cold reflections of her lost life called forth Cara in sympathetic magic and a clear expression of the knowledge and cruelty of this God.

Think.

This means it can read minds.

This means it means to speak to me.

Think of the meaning, repair your heart later.

If there is a heart remaining.

She wanted to apologize to her parents, to herself, that she had exposed them to this… thing… but this thing would hear her.

By the way, don't call it a thing.

Take a step.

She focused on the peripheral indications of battle, of reminders that people were dying, that she had to move, had to speak, had to pass whatever test lay before her.

She had to choose.

She had thought about the possible choices Vigil had proposed but she had no idea which ones she really faced. The colors, the effigies gave no indication.

The image of her mother said "You believe you know what you face."

She stepped forward and said "I believe I have gathered knowledge that brought me here, but you must tell me what I face."

The image of her father said "Can you think your way to faith?"

She tilted her head down and said "Whatever I believe, my mind can be changed. I believe I must convince you that I am worthy of choosing. I do not know if I am worthy. I know my companions are worthy. I know that in the sky all around us are beings, organic and synthetic, that are worthy. They are the dead and the dying. I believe I would not be here without you, without them, and without all the lives of previous cycles, without the lives that are fighting now to give me this chance whether or not I am worthy. In that sense, my opinion does not matter. Their lives created a pyramid upon which I stand, and my point of convergence is insignificant. I only point at the sky, diminished in meaning from the base that lifts me. That anyone has arrived here and you have spoken to them matters. It is what you have done, what you will do, that matters."

Her ghostly face rose from the board and said "So says the Goddess of Folly" and her eyes drifted back down to the board, disinterested.

Her eyes passed from one effigy to the next, hoping one of them would speak. When they didn't she stepped forward and said "Please. I need help. I don't understand."

Her mother's image said "Perhaps you are right in that you are not worthy but your cause and your companions deserve better representation and I may provide that. Choose this direction and you will destroy all synthetic life in this cycle. You yourself are partly synthetic. Many will not survive the loss of their synthetic integration. Much of your technology will be lost but organics will have time to rebuild, recuperate, and set their clock back. They will know what awaits them if they fail again. I will not be there to save their memories in an eternal hourglass."

Her childish form said "Choose this direction and synthetic and organic life will be integrated, synthesized, one to the other. Your life will be taken and that will fuel the image of new life to come."

Her father said "Choose this path and control over Reapers will be granted. Your life will be consumed here and form the template for control."

So she did have to die, one way or the other.

She had known that, hadn't she?

She found herself shocked. She really hadn't. Struck dead for being unworthy possibly.

She should have known that.

But only her life. No more loss of life. That in itself was a relief. God spoke to her, God offered her the choice, she only had to choose.

She wanted to ask if it was lying, if the Geth had created subverted portals but she thought she might be struck by lightning if she let the words pass her lips.

God required sacrifice and she may not be humble, but she was right when she said her companions deserved better.

She hadn't had time to prepare herself, hadn't known she'd die. She could not destroy all synthetic life, it was not possible. No Sooth, no EDI… too many casualties. She might survive but… that was impossible. If the portal had been subverted to destroy organics she absolutely could not risk it.

She could not decide, did not know, and then realized…

Her companions.

Her mutinying companions…

Don't move.

Stall.

Oh…

She couldn't, people were dying.

She suddenly vehemently did not want Reapers to exist anymore, did not want anything to remain of this God in effigy or true form, the cold and disinterested eyes of her past family staring at her in her potential future…

She could not spend eternity with them.

The heated eyes of her mutinying family were boring into her back.

She could not say goodbye.

She could not explain.

She began to sprint to the Synthesis portal.

Take steps.

Take all the steps.

Stop the fighting.

It's over, Cara.

They know they love you.

They know you love them.

They know you have to do this.

When she began to move she heard Garrus shout her name and that increased her speed.

Could he overtake her?

Run faster.

Then words rang out in Senar's clear and loud voice: "Lasam. Inafer i'mae. Hold still. Do not move."

She did. She held still. She skidded to a sudden halt, the momentum turning her around partly and she could see Senar striding forward. She felt warm and in the right place until the panic overtook that sensation and she tried to move again, unsuccessfully. Garrus tried to step forward to intercept her, to intercept him, but Senar said without looking back "Hemorus, please stop him or odds are high that he dies."

Russ didn't hesitate, yanked Garrus into a hold with the sudden hum of biotics. Stasis.

Senar stepped in front of Cara, lifted her chin with a fingertip. He said softly "This is where I leave you and where you must be brave, Lasam."

She ignored the sound of Garrus struggling and said desperately "Senar, I have to do this…"

"You do not. Someone has to do this. Perhaps you have convinced this God that your companions are indeed worthy, Lasam. I must see if that is true."

"No. No, I won't let you, Senar, you have Yased. You have to go back."

Stall him.

Move. MOVE. Move.

Please, move.

He gave her a look that meant she was woefully ignorant of reality "Lasam, all my work… your bond mate right here… and you believe I would allow you to sacrifice yourself if I could prevent it?"

She shook her head "Senar, I'm not your responsibility. This is my responsibility."

"Yes, you are my responsibility, and this is my responsibility because I choose it. I believe there is no better candidate standing here for control than I."

She could hear Garrus shouting "Let me GO! He's going to send her through!"

She heard Russ say calmly "No, he won't."

"Then he'll take her with him."

"No. He won't."

Senar didn't look away but his smile turned from reassuring to a reflection of how he was perceived, how he should be perceived. He was not hurt by Garrus's reaction or reassured by Russ's. He said to her "He is afraid for you, but you are safe, Lasam. As of this moment, you no longer need to be Shepard. When I am gone you will be able to move again. You have done enough. You need only be yourself. Be loved." His palm caressed her cheek. Tears spilled down her face. He traced a tear track with his thumb. He gazed at her and she realized if he was imagining this moment as a future memory, there wouldn't be any more of him to be able to remember.

She'd be the one unable to forget.

She was… woefully ignorant of reality. He wouldn't give in. He would not change his mind. She could not argue and win. He had asked her to hold still, he had not asked her to be at peace with holding still once she had done it. Trying to move was like being in a dream state where she could feel effort and intention expend themselves uselessly. She would be exhausted before she could move if she kept trying.

She desperately clung to the idea of this being a dream and she wished to wake.

Please, no.

I'm still back in the Med Bay bed and this is a break from Prothean screams to my greater nightmare. Failure. Loss. Pain. My family dying again.

Everyone's family dying again.

She said with a trembling voice "You're a terrible person."

His smile was crooked "This has been established, Lasam. You would no doubt make better choices, but I will make choices in your honor. You gave me back my life. My spirit and my arm are now mine to use because of you. I choose this. Yased knows he is loved, but please remind him. He will understand. My son is brave and he has a strong heart. I leave him behind, but he will always have you."

She said in a choked whisper "Irikah… by the shores… she's waiting for you."

"My wife is brave and has a strong heart. She will always have me and I will always have her. You know what I wish, Lasam, and what you have promised. Given the choice I would ever seek you in the sands. You are brave and have a strong heart. I love you. One final request, from a man about to die. Kiss me, Lasam, because you wish to, and because I ask."

She did wish to. She had wished to. She could move, but only to kiss him, not to move closer to the colored portals with their cold guardians. Her body surged with the ability to do this one thing. His head bowed to hers, his arm around her waist pulling her off the ground and up, held tight to his body.

She heard Garrus's keen and barely registered it except as pain, more pain, everyone's pain, the hum of Russ's renewed stasis and struggle. She hadn't tasted venom before, now Senar's lips on hers were her primary focus, an action without context at the end of his life, seemingly the end of hers. She felt unable to take another step toward life as she could not take a step toward death.

There would be no more Senar, no more teasing, no more terrible person, no more terrible purpose, and she couldn't bear the idea, would much rather die herself.

She'd brought him here.

She'd led him here.

It was her fault, her responsibility.

Venom became the stronger component of her internal world, tiremit having started when she was contemplating his ruin, her ruin, their ruin. Desperation surged, a powerful thing that moved in cross current to the stunned and still part of her that tore away everything else as meaningless as long as his lips stayed on hers. Tight, spiraling dizziness curled through her in familiar and smoky trance.

She tried to sway him with the bend of her body, with the brush of her lips and the touch of her tongue, tried to do the only thing she could do - kiss him.

Then all that remained was that she was kissing him because she loved him, because it was the end of his life and she only had seconds remaining before he was lost to her.

Because she wished to kiss him.

Because she did not wish to stop, ever.

He was hers.

He had to listen.

He had to stay…

Please, please, don't.

She had no other path. Just another moment, just another minute, just… just the kiss, only the kiss, all she could feel.

A thin, detached and racing desperation reached the only conclusion she could come to with all the added variables. She was boxed in. Russ wouldn't let Garrus go. Garrus wouldn't let her go. They would both allow Senar to go…

He would go, his final move clear. It was his turn. He had the boards turned on each other and the opposing Doyenne hijacked and the final move would be to sacrifice himself.

And if she had not convinced this God that she was worthy, that her companions were worthy…

They would all die here.

Would Senar defile the Cathedral?

Had she defiled it or sanctified it?

Had her words convinced it that he could take her place, was more worthy?

Her mind could not be the only one read here by this thing.

Had a vindictive God decided that destroying her was a much more satisfactory outcome than outright killing her?

For it to cause her pain that would not end?

Please… please don't let him go. It has to be me.

Please, I know you can hear me. Please.

You're a God. Stop him. Take me.

It has to be me.

Her arms tightened around his neck as the kiss continued, until she knew all the answers. She loved him. He was leaving. She could not stop him. She wanted to die… in so many ways, and she would not be permitted to make that choice.

His kiss made him worthy of her. That's all she could feel in the touch of his lips, his breath, the way he murmured her name, something holy kindled in him, something caught like the flame in a censer, sanctifying.

His sacrifice made him worthy.

She never had been.

Had she?

Now she would never know and he would be gone.

She would be broken.

He was the one that broke the kiss. He looked down at her and she saw on his face, in his eyes, in his smile and felt in the brush of his fingertips on her face that he loved her. He was leaving. She could not stop him.

She whispered "Cheater…"

He put her back down on unsteady feet but kept the support of his arm around her waist, one hand smoothing her hair back. All the love he had for her coalesced into a smile that made fresh tears surge. The expression transformed his face as he said with humor in his voice, on his lips and his eyes "It is the only way I can win, Lasam." She leaned in because she couldn't let go, her eyes tightly closed and nothing on her lips except for his name and the word please, the remains of cooling and stinging venom. He granted her the shelter of his arms for a few long moments, his hand gently cradling the back of her head.

No.

You're mine.

You can't do this.

You can't go.

I won't let you.

She thought these things but she couldn't say them, couldn't say anything else.

All that was left was incoherent and useless begging.

He'd said she was brave but she wasn't. Internal whirling panic added up to no solution, no idea, no way to stop him. She was shaking and crying and wishing she could go back in time and change something, everything, to make this moment different. Senar lifted her in his arms and carried her back to Garrus. She heard the end of Russ's stasis and she was placed in stunned and silent Turian arms.

Russ's arms remained on Garrus's shoulders, unwilling to let him go in any way that meant Russ would not be able to pull him back, keep him from harm or death.

She still couldn't move unless Senar released her, and he wouldn't. She would not be free to move on her own until he was gone. She could… order Garrus to stop him… and it wouldn't matter. Russ would not let him. What she wanted here nobody else would allow. She could cause the people she loved to harm each other or defy her, and still Senar would get his way. Senar might kill Garrus or Russ or both as long as she was protected. He'd asked Russ to stop Garrus to prevent either of them being harmed.

Russ had known Senar would not take her with him, any more than Russ would take Garrus with him. He had understood immediately.

They were kin, they were family, and they understood each other in ways Cara and Garrus could not.

As of that moment, as Senar had said, in the moment he had chosen, she was no longer Shepard and she was loved.

Her orders were meaningless.

Mutiny had reigned in the final moments, the result of her command had been anarchy and mutiny…

Senar said nothing more but put his hand under Garrus's fringe for a moment, then did the same with Russ. For a man of customary grim countenance, right now his face was relaxed, loving and seemingly as welcoming of his fate as the rest of them were rejecting and horror-struck, minds unable to make any move except those that followed their natures.

Words couldn't help her. Crying wouldn't help her.

She watched.

Garrus's arms tightened around her as Senar tilted his head, smiled at her, turned and walked calmly into the aura of blue light and was gone.

She was too shocked to make a sound, move or do anything but stare. Where he had been created an empty place, a void in the light, a void in her mind, a void in her heart.

Her last and only prayer to a God that had truly existed had been denied and it had taken what mattered to her from her as cleanly as though her heart had been torn out in offering.

She had brought him to this altar and said he was worthy…

And it had taken him on her word…

Blue warmth radiated from where he had been, moved through her. She had a shocked impression that the expanding force was the color of Senar's biotics.

She closed her eyes and did not want to open them again.

She didn't have to.

She was Cara now.

Not Lasam. Not Siha. Not Drala'tem.

Never again.

She was not Limayeth anymore, no walls, no fortress.

She was a wet, panicked virce with her tree clinging to her to keep her from the blue flood that had swept away her purpose, her goal, her Manipar, a hole punched through her out of which vital things were bleeding.

That was my choice…

Senar, I want to kill you for that…

Please come back so I can kill you myself…

Please.

I never thought I could beg you for anything that you would not give…

I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry.


	69. Chapter 69

Garrus watched as the blue wave faded, as seismic shifts finished as abruptly as they had begun. Cara was limp in his arms and the only thing he had to say was a panicked "What the hell just happened?"

Russ said "No idea. That was… control? Tuelon's in control of what?"

"Reapers?"

"Oh. How?"

"Fuck if I know." Garrus looked around, the bays all gone completely dark, whatever it was that had spoken to her was gone. Her parents? Her? He didn't ask. Too many questions, too exposed here, too exposed to everything until his hide felt raw as though he were being watched from all directions and each direction held menace. "I want to get her out of here."

"You're not gonna punch me for insubordination, Councilor?"

Yeah. That. Kill Senar for touching her. Kill Russ for restraining him. Do… what… about her kissing Senar? Fall apart? Can't. He said tersely "Hands are busy."

"Right, so… later."

Garrus said gruffly, unwilling to create or accept any further conflict or blame, counting assets and not liabilities for the present, entirely overloaded moment. "I'm alive. She's alive. You're alive." Cara closed her eyes tighter in response to that statement and a shudder went through her body, marking the beginning of uncontrolled shivers from her. Shock. He said "We can debate it later. Now we get out of here."

"If anything's still working." Russ headed toward the lift platform, Garrus following. The controls worked. Garrus thought about where to go from here, psychologically the answer was a blank. Physically? Not the apartment Senar got for her. Never take her back there. Never.

Russ said "We're going to get somewhere safe, Shepard. It looks like things are still running. We'll figure it out."

Cara's lips were turning a pale-rimmed blue as she said dully "Don't call me that."

Russ growled "What's she saying?"

She repeated with detached intent but slightly raised volume "Don't call me that. My name's Cara Fanning."

Garrus couldn't possibly hold her closer. He met Russ's eyes and said "That's her real name. Cara Fanning."

Russ looked at Garrus as though he were asking if she were broken. Garrus beseeched Russ's forbearance with his eyes, gave no answer, because he didn't know himself. If she was broken, he would fix her. He held her, pressed his crest to her forehead and began to hum. He had no words, he hadn't heard what Senar had said to her, wouldn't ask her, couldn't process what he had seen.

Russ asked "And if we run into Geth?"

"We'll figure it out. Guns still work. You still glow blue, right?"

Russ tested his weapons and flared biotics, then he looked Garrus and Cara up and down once as though to indicate Garrus could not hold a gun and her…

Senar Tuelon was gone and… in control of Reapers? What did that mean? They just needed to find a place to recover. To think. Anyplace. Garrus hailed the Normandy "What's going on out there?"

Joker answered "Good to hear from you, Garrus." He sounded as confused as Garrus felt. "Bright blue light… then nothing. I mean nothing. Geth ships drifting. Nobody firing, we just need to avoid collision."

Garrus thought about getting her to the Normandy but he believed she meant it when she said to not call her Shepard. That wasn't just shock. That was a vow she'd made to him, that she would only be Cara when her job was done, and it was done. He wasn't going to try to make her explain anything to anybody. Garrus said "Okay. Spectre Senar Tuelon is… he's dead. Orbestan and I are evacuating the Crucible with the Commander and headed toward the habitable sections of the Citadel if possible. No injuries." Other than her heart. He did not say Shepard. "Is the Citadel still functioning?"

EDI responded "Yes, Councilor. The Citadel is functioning. There are Geth, but they are inactive. No continued hostilities."

"Thanks EDI. Closest living space to where we are? Direct us away from Geth if possible. Take us to somewhere close, somewhere we can set up a… command center. A command center with access to dextro and levo, a kitchen, a bed and a shower, okay?"

"Affirmative. Route plotted. Sent to your Omni Tool. No hostile activity detected."

"Thanks EDI."

They proceeded in a tense and silent blur of stop and start movement. He had growing confidence in the fact that Geth were truly inactive, though his hide burned every time they passed one and he waited to be shot in the back. That shot never came. If it had come, they would have hit Russ, who ranged himself as much as he could to protect Garrus from being shot in the back as he managed to cover threat that might be in front of them with his extra height and reach.

They cautiously maneuvered around an eerily posed Geth with weapon drawn and weapon active, the last one before their goal of living quarters. EDI opening the door. Russ picked up the Geth, made a sound of disgust and moved the Geth away from its position, pointed it away from the entrance.

When they were all inside and EDI had the door locked, the enclosed space helped keep Garrus's hide from crawling from all the cumulative threat.

Russ asked "You think he… does that mean that since they've got Reaper code… does that mean?"

"I have no idea what it means, but if it does mean that and he stopped them… or that blue stopped them… I'm just glad they're not shooting. If there's really no hostility, find out, okay? I need to… Spirits, I need to take care of her, she's in shock. I don't want to take her to the Normandy. Your answers, your observations are as good as mine. Get in touch with the Normandy, get in touch with Council command, make some sort of statement."

"Statement about… what?"

"Russ… I don't know."

"And when they think I'm crazy?"

"Then let them try to explain it. Tuelon is gone. Fuck… would you please notify Yased? Please, Russ. She can't do it. I can't ask her to. He needs to know. You saw what we saw. I can't give you any more information. Right now I have to take care of her."

"Yeah. Okay. I'm on it."

Garrus's voice was raw with gratitude. "Thank you. Don't… don't tell anyone that she's going to be there or she's going to give a statement. Take charge. It's your show. If I'm right… she's done with command, but I'll break that news later once I'm sure. Preserve options for now. Feel free to be authoritatively vague as hell. She's done unless she says she isn't, but I won't make her answer to Shepard anymore. Take that as an order from my Avah."

"And are you done with being a Councilor?"

"If she's done, I'm done. We had a job, we did it. Now we stop paying for it, stop being torn in too many directions to endure. We heal." Garrus was truly hoping that could happen. He was starting to shake from delayed shock himself. Russ steadied him with a hand on his upper arm.

Russ smiled and Garrus's heart slammed as he said "Whatever you need, Garrus Fanning."

Garrus said "Thank you" and tried not to stumble as numbness seemed to leak from cracks in his bones, cold in his muscles. It was only a short way to a bed, to put her down on it. She was shivering, withdrawn, and she had not responded to anything they'd said beyond asking Russ to not call her Shepard.

She cooperated, slack faced and drooping, as he undressed her like a sleepy child, limp but sitting up obediently until he shifted her back. She lay there stiff and staring. He swallowed hard, took off his own armor quickly and lifted her bodily, settled her against his chest with her cradled.

He would be her warmth and stability. He would be her plate.

When they'd gone still and quiet, no movement except labored breath and slamming hearts she said a bleak and thin "I'm sorry."

The words tore his heart out and offered it up to the raw, unforgiving new reality that he did not understand, to the lost old reality that he had never understood either, only thought he had. He couldn't ask her what she was sorry about. Anything. Everything. "I know, Cara." He did not tell her it was going to be okay, could not comfort her about that. She'd wanted to go herself. He'd thought they were both going to… she'd be gone… it could have happened…

He could have killed Senar himself for touching her.

If Russ hadn't held him back…

If Senar hadn't held her back…

Garrus swallowed, wanted to say something more, wanted to whisper that he wasn't sorry. But he was. He was sorry Senar was gone, and he'd mourn the man, but Cara was experiencing the death of her command, the death of her mission, the death of one of her selves and the death of a man she loved.

He felt shock and anger at the fact that she would have gone herself, disappeared in a bloom of blue… or for her it would have been green? She would have chosen synthesis? He couldn't fathom it, whatever choice she'd tried to make denied by their chaotic but in retrospect entirely predictable mutiny.

He wasn't sorry and didn't care about what choice she'd wanted, certain that he was as grateful for Senar's successful interference as she was horrified by it. They could not meet except to mutually choose to not speak about it, to not tear more off each other.

Back to basics. Breathing. He was breathing. She was breathing. They'd start with that. He said "We're going to keep breathing. When you get hungry we're going to get something to eat. You're going to sleep when you're tired. You don't have to go back to the ship. You don't have to be Shepard ever again." He thought about her insistence about her name, out of place unless… he asked her cautiously "Is that what he told you?"

"Yes. He said… he told me… that I didn't need to be Shepard… and that I should be… I should be loved. He made me hold still. I couldn't move. Venom trance. I… I did not think he would do that to me. I've been so wrong about so many things."

He thought momentarily about the fact that despite Senar telling her what to do, despite her rejection of his action and the weighted responsibility for his death clawing her apart from the inside, she'd immediately honored his request, and so would Garrus. The man had known her, known her well enough to give her what she'd wanted, venom much deeper than either of them had suspected. Who knew what truths Senar had pulled from her or planted. Garrus's eyes clamped shut tight against the idea that the kiss he'd witnessed had not been their first, that they'd done it before, that she had been unable to stop Senar from taking what he'd wanted before. That possibility was newly folded into all the unspoken pain of her words when she said she was sorry. But Garrus did know that not being Shepard was a truth she could, would honor and was something she did want, had wanted. Long before Senar had appeared in her life, this had been a truth she wanted, the reason why she was so frightened of bond. Because she would give him everything. He told her with more strength in his voice than he felt at all "Then we'll do that. That was his last wish. You're going to breathe. You're going to eat. You're going to sleep. I won't leave you. You're going to be loved, Cara. Every day."

"I'm so sorry."

"I know. I know you wanted it to be you and I wish I could tell you I'm sorry about that. I'm not. I won't ever be. But I'll be there. I promise. I know you're sorry you wanted to go, I know you're sorry he went… but that man loved you, Cara. He wanted you to have a chance."

"He should have had a chance…"

"Yeah. He should. I'm sorry I thought he was…"

"He knew… Russ wouldn't let you… I thought we might die, but it never occurred to me that we'd have to… choose to die. It should have. I'm so sorry."

"It all happened so fast, Cara. He was… Is… Spirits, I don't know, if he's in control of Reapers… is he?"

"I don't know."

"So much we don't know. But I know I love you. I know you're devastated. You won't have to give a speech, you won't have to be in command, you can fall apart. I'll help put you back together when you're ready."

"I love you. I know it doesn't look like it… I don't know if you can believe me. Can you forgive me for wanting to go?"

"It was your job to go. Now it isn't. Okay? It's done. He chose. Now we choose. We choose what he said, that you won't be Shepard, that you'll be loved. We'll do that together."

"But Palaven…"

"Cara… I don't care. Or… I do, but being those people was our job, and doing those jobs again would take us away from each other. We know exactly how much. I'm not sorry you don't want to be Shepard. Please don't be sorry that I don't want to be Councilor. You want to be Cara Fanning. I want to be Garrus Fanning. You did it. You saved the galaxy. Take the win, Cara."

"We did it. He did it."

"You got him there."

"I wish I hadn't."

"I know. But I promise you… he loved you. Loves… you. My tenses are screwy. You're sorry… I'm sorry… he's not. Wherever, whoever… he's not. He made a choice and I will thank him every day for that."

"Don't blame Russ."

"I won't."

"I should tell Yased."

Garrus hesitated because he didn't want her to have to do that, didn't want it to drive her deeper into shock to try to explain, but he also didn't want to deny her what she felt was her right, her responsibility.

Her Omni Tool made a bizarre chirp and she flinched. She ignored it, shoving her hand under the blankets and leaning back against him, head turned away from the sound in reflexive rejection.

It made the same noise. He saw an edge of holographic projection, parts of what looked like letters through the blanket. He reached for her arm and pulled it out slowly. There were words hovering in glowing blue display. Two translations, what looked like English and something he could read in corresponding Turian script.

LASAM, I WILL TELL YASED.

YOU ARE, YOU WILL BE SAFE.

YOU ARE, YOU WILL BE LOVED.

DO NOT BE SORRY.

She began to tremble. Garrus followed soon after. She whispered "Are you alive?"

NO.

"Are you in pain?"

NO.

"Where are you?"

UNKNOWN.

I MUST ORIENT.

I MUST LEARN.

I AM AWARE OF YOUR LOCATION.

GETH WILL GUARD YOU.

YOU WILL BE SAFE.

"The Geth are… yours?"

ALL REAPER PLATFORMS AND SYSTEMS BELONG TO ME.

Garrus muttered "Nice trick."

Cara said "Can I see you?"

NO.

"Why?"

MY BODY IS GONE.

I AM CONTROL YET DISORIENTED TO PLACE.

I AM AWARE OF MANY PLACES AND I AM LOCATED IN NONE.

I MUST LEARN.

THERE IS MUCH TO DO.

"Geth will keep us safe from what?"

ANYTHING.

EVERYTHING.

THERE IS NO THREAT FROM REAPER FORCES.

MUNDANE FORCES OR CHAOS THAT CONSPIRES TO KILL EITHER OF YOU MAY YET REMAIN.

THEY WILL NOT SUCCEED.

"Can I help?"

YOU HAVE DONE EVERYTHING YOU MUST DO.

I MUST DO WHAT REMAINS.

REST, LASAM.

HEAL.

DO NOT FEAR.

NOT FOR YOURSELF.

NOT FOR GARRUS.

NOT FOR ME.

COMMUNICATION WHILE ON THE CITADEL THROUGH TEXT WILL BE POSSIBLE.

I WILL ATTEMPT TO FIND A WAY TO SPEAK TO YOU LATER.

I CAN COMMUNICATE THROUGH REAPER PLATFORMS YET I DO NOT WISH TO SPEAK THROUGH A GETH.

Garrus said "They're terrible dressers."

Cara laughed and cried simultaneously, fingertips passing through the letters suspended in the air. She said "How do I find you?"

THE CITADEL IS MINE.

There was a long pause before the letters began again.

GO TO OUR APARTMENT.

YOU WILL BE SAFE.

THE CITADEL IS SECURE.

GETH WILL ESCORT YOU.

Garrus's mandibles twitched. He knew the guy always thought of that apartment as his and by extension hers. Theirs. She had always thought of it as his.

Dead or not, it was still definitely him.

THERE IS MUCH TO BE DONE.

IT SHALL BE DONE AND I WILL ALWAYS KNOW WHERE YOU ARE.

WHEN I AM ABLE, I WILL FIND YOU.

Garrus began to be slightly nervous about the fact that Senar was now apparently reasonably omniscient and still his first priority was Cara.

You know, after today, it could be so much worse.

AS I WILL NOT BE THERE, A GIFT TO KEEP YOU ENTERTAINED.

Her Omni Tool lit up and accessed a new, glowing blue interface.

HERE YOU WILL FIND THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE REAPERS.

READ. REST. BE LOVED.

ALL WILL BE WELL.

Cara pressed her lips together, wiped away a tear and said "I love you. I'll miss you."

THOSE THINGS WILL NEVER BE IN DOUBT.

GO TO OUR HOME.

LEARN OF PRIOR WORLDS.

WATCH THE WORLDS CHANGE.

ABOVE ALL

TAKE A NAP.

YOU ARE TIRED.

She said after a tear-soaked and startled incredulous laugh "Above all? Me taking a nap is your priority?"

AS IT HAS BEEN IN THE PAST.

SOME THINGS WILL NOT CHANGE.

I WILL BE HERE IF YOU NEED ME.

"I need you."

I NEED YOU AS WELL, LASAM.

FOOD WILL BE DELIVERED.

AND CLOTHING.

MAY I GO SAVE THE GALAXY?

She laughed again and said "Yes. Tell me all about it later."

AS YOU WISH.

The final letters stopped hovering and receded into the Omni Tool itself, appearing to form a new button on the new interface, her Omni Tool now glowing with the blue of the chosen portal, of his biotics.

Garrus said "The man has style. Even when he's dead. I know we were supposed to do the holding hands thing on the Citadel. Can we have the 'I carry you while inexplicable and errand-running Geth escort us' moment? That just sounds cool."

"Whatever you want, Garrus." She sounded infinitely better, giddy in fact, but shock was shock and he had no idea if she was going to faint or what was going to happen in the next fifteen seconds, so what he wanted now was to get her somewhere safe, somewhere familiar.

"Oh, that sounds so good." Garrus contacted Russ and said "Senar's…"

Russ answered "Senar's in every Citadel computer and interface. Nobody's going to have the slightest bit of trouble figuring out that a lot of things are under new management."

"Did he talk to you?"

"Yes. Well, he texted."

"Us too. We'll be at our apartment." He adopted the new pronoun of 'our', extended ownership of it to family. Maybe that's what Senar had meant. Belonging to four people.

"Got it. Looks like all the fighting has stopped."

"We're going to be surrounded by Geth, don't be worried."

"They're shut down everywhere, a few are starting to… clean up and aid the wounded. So…"

"So we're good."

"Yeah, I think we are. People are hurt and there's a mess but no more fighting. EDI told me that comm is out to anything but this system. Senar told me that the mass effect relays are all down, but they can be repaired, he believes. He will relay information to EDI and to me, to you when it concerns you as he locates it system to system. Only where it concerns you as Cara and Garrus, not as Shepard or the Councilor. He's everywhere a Reaper platform is and it will take him some time to investigate, fill in blanks, figure out how this whole thing works. He's going to be busy for a while finding everyone he needs to find and getting aid to them. We wouldn't have been able to tell Yased ourselves. Comm to Palaven is out. How is she?"

"Feeling better. Under orders to relocate and take a nap."

"Good time for it."

"Meet us later. You and the… Reaper God… can take over."

"My time to shine without you guys hogging all the mortal glory. Might be hard to compete with a God, but at least he likes me."

"And when you're done and you need a nap too, we've got extra bedrooms."

"I'll be there. Just occurred to me that the Reaper God was the one who asked me to hold you still, so I've got backup for that debate."

Garrus laughed and said "You're an asshole, Vakarian."

Russ laughed and grinned, cut off contact.

Garrus did feel the pull of feeling he should say something, make an announcement… he was a responsible Councilor…

And then he had a case of severe 'fuck it' because really… he was exhausted, had just helped save the galaxy by… being forced to do nothing… which he was not going to admit. He did not think the Council had any relevance any more. The Citadel had never belonged to them and now it belonged to Senar. He really had no answers that would make any sense to anyone. Russ would handle it. Senar would handle it.

Now he was going to consciously do nothing except take care of her.

Nap.

He put on his armor, checking second to second to ensure that she was not going to fall over. She was staring at her Omni Tool with a heart-torn smile that gave him hope she could heal. She was tough. After what they'd been through, the rest would fall into place. He wrapped her in a blanket, she wrapped her arms around him as far as she could reach, her head against his chest and her smile directed only at him now, the promise of Cara. He lifted her and headed off to their apartment.

They were escorted by a moving fence of Geth.

He'd be prone to complaining that it was unnecessary, but in this case, he trusted to Senar knowing what was required and if she had an ostentatious Geth escort when nothing otherwise was happening, he should count certain blessings.

Halfway there she was asleep.

They were both breathing.

He wanted to give general thanks to fate, to Spirits, and he realized with a start that there was an actual God that was responsible for this outcome.

He grinned.

I am not thanking you.

Okay, I'm thanking you, but I'm hoping you can't hear me because that's creepy.

Not that creepy doesn't suit you.

This is really fucking weird.


	70. Chapter 70

Cara woke up in her bed. Their bed. Green and gold human and Drell furnishings surrounded them.

Garrus was asleep, his arms around her, not joined.

She had been… when they got here… she supposed the word was in the vernacular 'zonked' and in the non-vernacular… she had no idea.

They all needed new words.

And new furnishings.

When she shifted closer to him, Garrus roused and adjusted to her, sleepily kissing her forehead.

She said "Hey."

He answered "Mmmm?"

"Hey. It occurs to me. This place is Drell and human and green and gold. How about some Vakarian blue and scary sharp Turian stuff?"

He shrugged, smiling, his eyes still closed "Used to bother me. Doesn't now."

"Now it bothers me. I mean, it did then too but I had different priorities. If someone came to visit me here and saw Turian stuff up in that particular shade…"

"No longer a problem, huh? I bet you could get a Geth redecorating squad in here in no time."

"They might be more useful elsewhere. I have no idea what's going on outside."

"How do you feel about that?" His eyes opened, curious and cautious deep blue.

"Like I want it to stay that way at least until after I eat something. Then I want to know… Garrus Fanning… what do YOU… want to do today? What do you want to do every day?"

"Is that a trick question?"

"Nope."

"Is that a trick answer?"

"Maybe."

He laughed and said "Cara, you don't have to be Shepard."

"I know that. I don't have to be. But… I should be? I should walk back onto the Normandy, I should make reports, I should officially hand her over? What do you think, to Russ?"

"He'd like that."

"Me too. Even if it's only symbolic because the relays are down. They'll be rebuilt. What would you like? You don't have to be Councilor… but I bet you're itching to find out what's going on and how you could help."

"Maybe."

"We don't have to. We can. Not forever, but for a little while. Power vacuum, uncertainty, lack of acknowledgment and ignorance in the people we've led… it's a little cruel if we can manage to pull ourselves together by lunch."

"You sure?"

"Maybe."

"You're being… what was the phrase… drawn from ignorance to competence, aren't you?"

"Maybe."

"I would feel better if I helped with the Citadel."

"I'd feel better if I learned the disposition of the ships and personnel that aided with the assault and thanked them all for their service. I did promise that commendation, too, so there's paperwork involved already."

"Yeah. I suppose that makes us terribly boring people."

"Predictably responsible."

"Ditching on the first chance we have to really indulge in irresponsibility. I'm ashamed of us."

"Me too. What can I make you for breakfast?"

"I have no idea."

"Neither do I. I've got until lunch to focus entirely on my bond mate before we go be dull people who can't work up a good pout."

"We can too. We just can't sustain it."

"I love you. So much. So, part-time Shepard and Vakarian, strictly voluntary, and then home, back to being The Fannings."

"You're doing this for me, aren't you?"

"Maybe."

"Thank you, virce."

"You're welcome, I love you so much."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

She did answer to Shepard.

He did answer to Vakarian.

Temporarily and voluntarily they both assessed, communicated, formulated, acknowledged, praised, grieved, assigned and streamlined. There was peace, but there were suspended living conditions and broken communication with the rest of the galaxy for millions of people and that needed to be squared away.

They coordinated with Senar. Geth crossing guards were great, but the biggest issue that presented itself was all of the ships that had streamed to the Citadel in the high pitch of battle through the relay and were now idling. Geth were integrated into C-Sec and Keeper assistance teams, managing security and production. Everyone organic needed to be billeted somewhere. For how long they did not know, Senar estimated at least a few months, not to exceed an Earth year. Many ships themselves were capable of sustaining life, but Collector ships were nasty and the Citadel was a much better spot to live.

The logistics were mundanely complicated and Vakarian and Shepard exerted their authority toward settling everyone, civilian and military, reasonably amicably without conflict or insult. There were those who felt they did not receive the best housing and it was true, they hadn't. The Citadel was packed in tight.

The good news was that it would not significantly overstress Citadel systems according to Senar. The Keepers and Geth were capable of converting more space for more optimal housing, including converting some of the spaces on the now-defunct Crucible for the same purpose. Food production would not be a concern. Reaper technology could be more prominently integrated into farming methods, which were still limited, but would not be indefinitely according to Senar.

THE REAPER INVASION WILL PROCEED. REAPERS EXISTING IN DARK SPACE WILL MOVE IN TO ASSIST WHEN RELAYS ARE REPAIRED. WITH THEIR ARRIVAL THEN MANY NEW THINGS BECOME POSSIBLE.

"Don't say Reaper invasion. Gives me the willies."

REAPER INVASION.

"Stop it."

REAPERS ARE COMING, CARA.

"You're mean."

The open platform where the former God had caused their Cathedral to be built on the Crucible became a popular tourist destination.

She did not answer questions about Senar, only gave one statement regarding his service, his loyalty and his sacrifice, and how she could not have accomplished her mission without him.

THAT WAS TOUCHING.

"And it's true. Now you have to answer any questions about it yourself, now that everyone has a Citadel computer connection and curiosity."

YOU ARE UNKIND.

"Maybe open an embassy on the Tower."

WOULD THAT NOT BE A CHURCH?

"Embassy."

I DO NOT APPRECIATE BEING DEMOTED FROM GOD TO AMBASSADOR.

"Gods have a tendency to announce things with lightning bolts. Ambassadors can use press releases. It's more civilized."

I WILL CONSIDER IT.

After that the interface framing lines of her Omni Tool turned to jagged lightning edges in familiar blue.

It was Russ that taught her to cook Turian food. He was much better at it than Garrus, so they both said, and he enjoyed the process much more. She watched him move around the kitchen while her feet dangled over the edge of the counter to get a decent perspective. He was a great teacher and she felt she was maybe approaching the point where she wouldn't poison Garrus if she tried to cook for him.

They spent most evenings together in the warmly lit kitchen, her listening to Garrus and Russ argue over the merits of this ingredient over that ingredient, all things she could not taste, but might be able to make one day.

She held up her Omni Tool occasionally during debates regarding what should be done with ships and personnel so Senar could be… read… on the subject.

She asked "Why don't you get a voice simulator, Senar?"

I WOULD NEED TO DEVELOP ONE TO DUPLICATE MY VOICE.

I PREFER YOURS FOR THE TIME BEING.

So she read his messages aloud.

She was certain he enjoyed using her Omni Tool exclusively when they were all together so she was in essence his secretary.

Occasionally he would preface certain statements not by saying "I" but by saying things like:

THE REAPER GOD DEMANDS

"I'm not saying that."

THE UNSAID ONE DECREES

"I'm not saying that either."

THE ONE WHOSE VOICE IS NOT HEARD UNLESS SHE IS PLEASED REQUESTS

"That's better. That works. It's a little long though."

Russ had a tendency to say things like "Tuelon, this Keeper-farmed Marilet sucks. Fix it."

ACKNOWLEDGED.

"If you can't fix a fish you can't fix a galaxy, man."

BY YOUR WILL IT SHALL BE DONE.

"Awesome."

Senar informed her that Liara was alive and safe on Thessia. Reaper technology was spare on Thessia, but there were artifacts that had been under study. He had been able to communicate through those and had persuaded them to transmit information.

Reaper technology was even sparer on Palaven and that took longer, but there were Geth in the Palaven system, and some of them had been Reaper controlled. Communication was difficult to establish but it had been determined that Yased was alive, the Vakarian Clan safe other than those that had volunteered for the assault and had been casualties. Vilarene, Tensir and Solana were well.

Cara asked Senar one day "Hey. I've been meaning to ask. Are the Geth… technically… your slaves? The Reaper-controlled Geth, I mean?"

THEY ARE MORE CORRECTLY TERMED AS TOOLS. I WOULD RESIST THE COMPARISON TO SLAVERY BECAUSE THEY HAD AND HAVE NO POTENTIAL WILL OF THEIR OWN. IF I GAVE THEM NO DIRECTION THEY WOULD BE IDLE. THEY HAVE NO OPINION OF THEIR SERVICE, NOR ARE THEY ABUSED OR HARMED.

I HOPE TO LOCATE SOOTH AND ARRANGE FOR TRANSITION BACK TO THE CONSENSUS. THERE IS NO GETH NODE AVAILABLE NEAR THE CITADEL FOR CONVERSION AND I REQUIRE HER CODE. I COULD COMPOSE CODE OF MY OWN AND I WILL IF NECESSARY, BUT I WOULD PREFER HER INSIGHT.

At the mention of Sooth's name her heart squeezed and she asked "Wouldn't you have found… her… by now?"

NOT NECESSARILY, LASAM. I WILL CONTINUE TO SEARCH. SHE IS NOT OF REAPER ORIGIN OR I WOULD BE ABLE TO TRACE HER IN ARCHIVE. IT APPEARS THAT SHE DID OVERTAKE EVERY PLATFORM SHE SUCCESSFULLY REACHED AND NO RECORD OF HER CODE WAS DISCOVERED BY REAPER CONTROLLED SOURCES, OR IF IT WAS DISCOVERED IT HAS SELF PURGED. SHE IS ENTIRELY UNIQUE, OF HER OWN DESIGN. THE SITE OF THE CAPTURE OF THE CRUCIBLE IS STILL CHAOTIC AND COMMUNICATION DIFFICULT, LOCATING ONE GETH AMONG HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS IF SHE DOES NOT WISH TO BE FOUND NEAR IMPOSSIBLE. THERE IS NO WAY FOR ME TO ESTABLISH COMMUNICATION WITH CONSENSUS GETH WHO DO NOT WISH TO BE LURED TO POTENTIAL REPROGRAMMING THROUGH CONTACT. AT THE MOMENT I AM MAINTAINING CESSATION OF HOSTILITIES UNTIL SHE IS LOCATED OR A BETTER COMMUNICATION SYSTEM DEVELOPED THAT CAN BUILD TRUST.

She was so grateful he used 'is' and not 'was' to refer to her. "She… dispersed code. Did she… Tali isn't sure either, but she explained… her plan, and that you knew. Tali said she kept… as much backup as she could manage. Do you think… I worry. I worry a lot."

AS DO I, LASAM. I KNOW SHE WOULD HAVE AND MAY HAVE DONE SUCH A THING TO GIVE US THE CHANCE TO COMPLETE OUR MISSION. WE DO KNOW SHE SUCCEEDED. IT IS DOUBTFUL WE COULD HAVE CAPTURED THE CRUCIBLE WITHOUT HER INFORMATION, ASSISTANCE AND POTENTIAL SACRIFICE. TALI'ZORAH AND I WILL WORK ON HER RECOVERY TOGETHER.

WHEN RELAYS ARE RESTORED WE WILL KNOW MORE AND WILL DEVELOP FURTHER OPTIONS FOR RECOVERY OR RESTORATION.

"I hope you find her."

IF SHE IS TO BE FOUND, LASAM, SHE WILL BE. I MADE HER A PROMISE, THAT I WOULD NOT FORGET HER, AND I WILL KEEP IT.

"Thank you."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

It did take months, three months with the combined coordination of Keepers, Geth, Senar and bits and pieces of Reaper technology that could be manufactured according to his specifications, but the relay was reopened to the Citadel. It was the first of the relays to be successfully reopened, and true to Senar's promise, there was a well-publicized Reaper invasion.

It was a spectator event.

Senar had opened neither church nor embassy, but it appeared he had answered everyone's questions to their satisfaction.

There was a visceral shiver to seeing Reapers themselves, the ones that looked like what Senar called Leviathan, which was a whole other story he would tell her someday.

He deferred many questions to 'someday' and had not developed a voice simulation program in the interim.

The answer why knocked on their door the evening of 'invasion' while Russ was cooking.

Garrus answered the door, Cara leaning against the doorframe from the kitchen, looking out to see who was there.

It was Senar. It looked like Senar.

He didn't need a voice simulator because he'd made a whole new… him… somehow.

Garrus looked him up and down once, blinked and then punched him, saying "That's for kissing my bond mate, come on in."

Senar smiled without visibly moving in any way from the blow. Garrus shook his fist out with a notable Turian swear and got out of the way as Cara ran to him, threw her arms around him and began to cry.

Russ yelled from the kitchen "Who is it?"

Garrus yelled back "Reaper God. Making her cry. Again."

"No way." Russ came out of the kitchen and took them both in. "I'll be damned. Tuelon, why the hell are you glowing gold?"

Garrus said "Yeah, isn't that a little over the top?"

She looked up at Thane-Senar-Reaper-God-Whatever-His-Name-Is-Today and he… looked the same as he always had. Glowing gold. He asked her "Shall I tell them?"

"Tell them what?"

"That this is how you have always seen me?"

"Since I've… what? Now… I mean, I can't tell the difference, so…"

Garrus interrupted "Do I look like that?"

Russ said "No, dumbass. Only one person here is glowing gold and it's kinda tacky."

She said "Yes."

Garrus said "That's just cool."

Russ said "Well, I'm confused."

Senar's arms enfolded her in a hug and he said "Cara has always seen me this way. Her mind… highlights certain concepts, certain people, in light or vibration."

Russ said "What color am I?"

Garrus said "Grey."

Russ snorted "Figures. C'mon, dinner's gonna burn."

She whispered "Have I thanked you for saving the galaxy?"

Senar replied "No, you have not."

"Good, because I never will and that was stupid and don't do that again."

"I do not believe I am eligible any longer."

"Good. Welcome home."

"Thank you, Lasam."

"So you're doing the whole God thing, huh?"

"I find it more appealing than civil servant."

"Okay. Come on in, have a seat. Russ is making dinner. Wait, do you eat? Are there any Godlike dietary… or is that deitary requirements now?" They walked to the kitchen and he said "I do not need to eat, no. I can still enjoy food if I choose."

Garrus said "And don't punch him, he's had some upgrades."

Russ laughed. He asked "So… you're what, immortal now?"

"Yes."

"Still everywhere all at once? How does that work?"

"This body is networked to Reaper systems, I can operate this platform as I would any other."

"Doesn't that get confusing?"

"At this point in time, likely only for you."

"Ouch. Pick on the mortal. So you're running how many platforms right now?"

"Several trillion."

"Oh. Well. Good for you." Russ sounded a little pale, served two Turian plates and an omelet for Cara. "Sorry, I don't have anything Drell… didn't stock for it."

"As I arrived unannounced that is completely understandable. If it is permissible I will stock Drell supplies tomorrow and I will cook for those who consume levo."

Garrus asked "Which you only do for fun, right?"

"Yes."

Russ said "Well, the fish has gotten better, thanks for that."

"You are welcome."

Garrus asked "What is the fleet of Reapers for?"

Senar replied "It will be possible to eliminate disease through genetic therapy for organic creatures aided by the technology that built this body, the technology I can use to do anything from curing disease to enhancing function to providing immortality."

Russ said "You're kidding."

"I am not. Those enhancements as well as quantum leaps forward in technology from this point should provide access to resources and energy that will now be easily produced, synthesized and provided."

Cara said "Won't that collapse the economy?"

Senar nodded "Yes. A new economy will emerge, one of voluntary production and not one of desperation or necessity."

Cara stopped a moment to take in the stunning potential change to the socioeconomic fabric and cultural standards.

Russ said "Well. Thanks for taking time out to see us in the busy schedule."

Senar replied "Time for me is irrelevant."

"Thanks. I feel special."

"Time for me is irrelevant in terms of waste. I wished to see you, to be truly present, and now I can be. Other platforms continue with what work must be done and my ideas generated will be contributed back to the whole."

Garrus said "Somewhere in there is a joke about us being the only ones that can have our time wasted."

Cara asked cautiously "How do you decide… who gets what procedure, who gets what resources?"

Senar turned to her "I thought I would ask you such questions. Whatever changes can or will be made should be made with minimal chaos."

Garrus said "Are we in the front of the line for immortality?"

Senar smiled at him "She is."

Cara picked up a roll from the basket and lobbed it at Senar's shoulder. "Stop it."

Russ laughed and said "Look, there's some tension here. I can fix this. Just let me kiss Garrus and everything will be even."

Garrus had caught the bouncing roll, Senar inspecting his leathers for damage, which, of course there was none from an unbuttered roll and likely there never could be any anyway. Garrus lobbed the roll at Russ, saying "Stop it."

Russ chewed and swallowed contemplatively, ignoring the roll and saying "You know, I think it's rude to discuss immortality unless you've brought enough for everyone."


	71. Chapter 71

Cara was trapped between thrilled and horrified, so very happy to have these men at the same table with her. She was blessed and grateful, but she had no idea how Senar knew… how he looked to her. Implications began to sink in slowly, like venom, overtaking her thoughts. She couldn't work out the logistics because wouldn't her synesthesia add on to what he generated and wouldn't that create some… interference pattern so he'd look different? Or did only Garrus and Russ see it and she didn't?

Or was her synesthesia… in his case… gone… and he generated it now artificially and that's why there was no interference pattern?

What would it mean if her synesthesia was gone in his case and generated artificially?

Wasn't that all impossible from beginning to end either way?

Or… not impossible but inexplicably Godlike in a very upsetting and personal way?

She was going to have to redefine the words 'Godlike' and 'impossible' she supposed, her mind spinning without traction, sinking deeper in through layers of 'what if' that all contradicted each other. Then there was the theoretical commentary about immortality taking place right now, choices that would transform the galaxy placed casually by him on the kitchen table like a flower arrangement.

If he only knew the one fact - that he glowed - he could have gotten that from surveillance somehow? Had she said something about it when he was monitoring her conversations with Garrus? Had he really stopped monitoring her?

But then… if he had known… she had never described HOW… just… that he glowed. This was…

There were a lot of ways to 'glow gold' and this was… her way.

She swallowed as she thought that the AI in the Crucible had read her mind, had recreated her parents, her as a child… had Senar… inherited that look into her mind? The ability to do it at will?

She closed her eyes and felt sick and dizzy. When she opened her eyes again she saw Senar looking at her, his expression unreadable. Sure. Let's discuss immortality and the inside of my mind. Let's scoop some of it out and have it for dessert.

Think clinically. Even knowing it would… freak her out terminally… he still did it. With Senar it was about motivations. Why had he done it? Why was he gold? What was the conclusion that he wished for her to work her way to?

To establish he was in fact a God, he would stand out, he was different, but he chose to take the form he'd held when he was under her command? He would not speak to her through an Omni Tool or through a Geth or another foreign platform. In this way he would seem no different to her, only to others, and she would know… that's how he wished to be seen.

Well, he'd seem different if she tried to punch him, but that had always been unlikely.

Taken that way it was not a threat, but an encapsulated visual syllogism to be worked through. It was potentially a tribute. He could take any form he chose, from trillions of platforms theoretically, function from each, but this is the form he chose to interact with her. He had asked permission to explain, so he wouldn't disclose it was due to her. People would just see glowing God and would not know that it was a tribute. Only she, Russ and Garrus would know that it had anything at all to do with her.

On a Senar-specific side note, she'd be fascinated and forced to either ask him a million questions or restrain herself from asking a million questions about being God, about new powers and perceptions. Afraid of every answer. She'd be thinking about him and his methods, his choices, as usual, and he liked that, always had.

So many things about the man-as-God would not, had not, changed. He was beginning his Godhood as he proposed to proceed, and she was free to question or not question his motives and try to parse his answers, as usual.

Shouldn't she be used to over-the-top gilded Senar tributes by now? The kitchen they were sitting in was one of them. Garrus and Russ were treating it all as entirely normal and she was grateful. Senar seemed to want it that way, to walk in unannounced, glow and sit at the table as though… of course, that's the way it had been, the way it is, the way it would be. She couldn't tell if she was excited or exhausted to potentially help solve issues and problems that might now have solutions.

Both. He was going to embody excitement and exhaustion, answers and questions, Godhood and mortality and keeping her guessing was a fun game he liked to play.

At least she wouldn't have to lie to do it, and yes… she did want to be a part of it, somehow.

Was it even possible to lie to him now? Like lying to Garrus, who could smell it on her, now Senar could… just know?

She did not want to lie to anybody anymore, certainly not herself.

It was all too much for her, the shock and mystery. She was grateful he was here, that he'd be here. She focused on that, pulling herself out of the digging-itself hole. The change in the conversation and the tones of their voices while she had been withdrawn made her feel as though they were all sensitive to her, all moving to protect her in their own ways. She pulled herself back to now and the sense of danger faded as the conversation shifted and no more food or punches were thrown.

She tried to ease back into the discourse, the rhythm of the four of them together setting a swift current and pace, something to prepare herself for, wade in at her opportunity and beware the undertow.

Garrus said "Why would I even want immortality?"

Russ asked incredulously "Are you kidding?"

"No. I've still got a good 120 years left. Every single one of my ancestors did it, the dying thing. Doesn't a good Turian honor tradition?"

Russ snorted and said "Like you give a damn about stupid and outdated traditions. You'd watch Cara die if she came down with something in 7 years that's incurable? Because your ancestors watched their bond mates die? They had to do that. They had no choice. You have a choice now. They would have grabbed it if they could."

Senar said "Incurable will be redefined."

Russ held out his hand to indicate Senar "See? I know you're stubborn, Garrus, but flat out stupid is new. Mostly new. You want Cara to watch you get sick and die? Ask her to let that happen without interference? Why would you do that to her? If I had my way you'd both be immortal as soon as possible. Can't stand the idea of you guys suffering or not being here."

Senar replied "I concur. It is a new choice that can be made. That it is a difficult choice with difficult implications does not mean it should not be made. I am able to provide immortality to all of you. All you need do is ask. Immortality for others must be carefully considered, but all at this table have earned it without question."

Russ said "See? That's what I'm talking about. A polite houseguest. About time."

Garrus said "Well, it's his house and his immortality."

Senar corrected "Her house. Your potential immortality."

She finally waded in with her own correction, saying "Our house. Senar, you probably lost your key what with, you know, all the unpleasantness with you dying and all, but your room is unchanged."

Senar said "I prefer that someone answers when I knock."

Cara said "Knew it. You just like making me do stuff."

"It is a pleasure a key cannot provide. My thanks for the welcome and the conversation, but I should be going."

Garrus asked "Thought your time couldn't be wasted?"

Senar said with a smile "My time cannot, yet someone pointed out that yours could." Senar turned to Garrus and asked "May I return tomorrow?"

Garrus smiled "Of course. Any day. Every day. Best Reaper invasion ever."

It had become a running joke and she said near automatically "Don't say that."

Russ lowered his voice and said in mock ominous tones "Reaper invasion."

She squeaked in mock distress and they all smiled at her, and everything was good. Really good. Senar said "Please, Lasam, walk me out."

At the door he asked "Have I apologized for taking your will from you?"

She looked at the floor, unable to answer. She had wanted to say an easy goodbye, grant an easy and welcome return invitation, treat everything as normal, but this… she couldn't. She was out of practice with lying and didn't want to get back into practice, thoughtlessly and then deliberately missing the chance to say something to make him more comfortable with the knot she'd never untangled for herself.

There wasn't anything on the line anymore, just her sense of awkward self, and that wasn't worth lying to conceal. That was here to stay.

He said quietly "You do not need to look at me, but hear my voice. There are some things I will only say with a voice and body that are familiar to you. There are some things I will not tell you and some things that I will tell you, but not now. I owe you an apology but I cannot give it. I am not sorry. In your heart and mind there is new pain and there is new doubt and there is old betrayal with the potential for more looming as you worry about me and my welcome in your life. I will not offer you false regret. I will offer you a promise that I will not override your will again. You are safe from me. Safe with me. I seek a place in your life because I need you. You saw the thing that created the Reapers and you learned to hate it for good reason. I have inherited its work and purpose and I must do different things with it. I must not fall to the temptation to become like it was, insular, self-protecting and ultimately insane, disconnected from the suffering it caused, believing itself benevolent. I must not fall to battle sleep. My current form with the glowing light of my significance to you is intended to remind me, remind you, that there is meaning in the work I must do, work I hope we can do together if you are willing. This is the light I have chosen for my Path. Have faith that I need you, Whole. The words I spoke to you, 'inafer i'mae' cannot be translated, much as Siha cannot. It is a phrase of Drell prayer. Those words have no power over you now, but they will always have power over me. They mean 'it is the will of the sand,' the dunes of Rakhana spun into metaphor of the endless expanse of merciless fate. The sand upon which I sought to find you as Manipar, facing mercilessness with hope. They are words of concurrent surrender and struggle. I placed those words in your mind when you returned from Intai'sei. You were in pain. I feared for you, unable to gain your trust because I was undeserving of it. I feared knowing that you were and would be helpless and in pain and would never reach out to me for help, fearing what price I would exact from you. From that moment, Lasam, I waited. Not to harm you, but to protect you from harm. Just as I could not abide you giving your life, I cannot abide Garrus losing you, Hemorus losing either of you if I can offer you a choice in the matter. They need you, just as I do, and they would not have survived your death as I fear I would not have. They could not be Whole without you, nor could I. You sustained them through merciless fate as I could not. You are here, you are safe, you are with your bond mate and with those you love and who love you in return. I am grateful to be one of them if you allow. I no longer fear that I cannot help you, that you will be in pain with no recourse. I know I will always be available to help you. I can offer you immortality, purpose and safety. I can offer those things without fear, without secrecy. Those things will not be held tightly in my fist. I will not require that you pay any price for them. They will be offered in my open palm, always. In many ways, Lasam, I believe I had no choice in what I did. From the moment I saw you I could not fail to be drawn to you. From the moment I wanted you I could not fail to watch over you. From the moment I loved you I could not fail to protect you. I did not fail in seeing, in wanting or in loving. I believe, Lasam, that it is and was… and will be… inafer i'mae. I believe that a God must have faith in something not of power, but of grace. I have faith in you. I have much to tell you as new possibilities open, and I ask for the right to return to your door, to knock, to have you answer or not answer as you choose. I will never enter without your consent. I will always come to you if you call. I promise that you will never bring harm into your life by answering the door or calling out to me and allowing me inside, whether that is into your home, your heart, your thoughts or your hopes."

She was crying again and couldn't speak. She couldn't tear her eyes away from his glowing, well-tailored boots.

He kissed her forehead and said "May I return tomorrow, Lasam?"

She nodded, still unable to look up.

His hand passed to the back of her head, held there for a moment, his lips to her hair, and then he was gone.

She stood there for a while, shifting her balance from foot to foot and watching tears splash on tile before Garrus moved to stand next to her and said "He made you cry again, huh?"

She nodded.

"He's really good at that."

She nodded.

"C'mon, Cara. Let's go to bed."

She said "I should… get the dishes."

"Screw the dishes. Russ has it covered."

"But he cooked."

"Russ. Has. It. Covered, virce. Besides, we can't stand the idea of you standing over a sink while you're crying. You might break something important."

She snuffled a laugh and he picked her up. He said "You're probably really clumsy when you're considering immortality, the fate of the galaxy and the glowing Drell God that stole your thunder."

"I believe technically he stole my lightning."

"For which I am in fact grateful. Tomorrow I won't punch him, tomorrow I'll thank him."

"Plus it looked like punching him hurt."

"So much. So very much. He could have ducked. He just stood there and let me hurt my fist on his face. Rude."

"At least you didn't cry."

"Only because I can't. Wanted to."

"And what do you think of all of this?"

"The gold thing's very cool. Immortality is something I don't understand. It's not like he's going to wave a hand and we're immortal. I worry about procedure and cost."

"Me too."

"We might be full time worrying about procedure and cost from here on out, it sounds like."

"It's nice to be making a reverse choice at least. We used to worry almost exclusively about how not to die. Now we have that answer and we have to worry about how not to die from a different direction."

"Nice change of pace. Except where it's terrifying and Senar Tuelon runs the galaxy, everyone goes to him for everything they need and he's in complete control of not only Reapers, but all organic and synthetic life."

"Yeah. That."

"It's encouraging he's offering you oversight and collaboration except that maybe he isn't and maybe he's just doing what he does, fascinating you and making you owe him."

"Yeah. That too. You worried?"

"Worried a lot. But not about you, not really. If he's proven anything, it is that he won't hurt you and he will do what he believes is in your best interest. The only wonky factor there is that he also wants you until it hurts, and I sympathize, but too bad. We couldn't stop him before without flat out killing him, and now we can't even do that. Who knows what becoming a 'template' did to him. Again, I worry about procedure, and cost. But he's a reasonably polite God with decent table manners and that's got to count for something."

"He says he won't override my will again."

"That's nice. Of course that might mean maybe you won't know the difference and can't catch him at it, can't do anything about it anyway."

"Yeah. That."

"I think Russ nailed it. He knew right away. If you get sick, if you get hurt, I'm going to Senar and all he has to do is make the offer and wait. He's got eternity. We don't. Not yet, anyway, but we might decide we need it. Odds are… we will. Yeah, I don't care about immortality for myself much, but immortality and immunity for you, hell yeah. No question. He's always played the long game, and now we're talking… really long. Don't get me wrong, I want to be with you forever literally and not metaphorically if I can… but a guy's gotta wonder about procedure and cost. How in hell does he know about the glowing?"

"That's the part that scares me the most."

"Yeah, and it was intentional. He couldn't resist doing it, I'm sure."

"Doing what?"

"Demonstrating that he knows you. I don't want to take it personally, but he's also demonstrating he knows you better in some ways than I do or ever could. So okay, those are all potential – really scary – negatives. The positive is that he did knock, he did ask permission, he did promise not to override your will, and he did leave, and without taking you with him."

"He said there's a lot he can't tell me. Yet, anyway."

"No doubt. We'll find out. When he's ready, not when we are. He knows something about you that's impossible to know without being in your head, so he's been in your head. Might still be, huh?"

"Yes."

"Okay. You scared?"

"Terrified. Stories about Gods being in love with mortals almost never work out for the mortals."

"Think he's watching us?"

"I don't think it's possible with current evidence to come to the conclusion in any way that he isn't. He wants us both to know."

"Did you ask him?"

"Couldn't. He talked, I listened."

"And cried."

"Yes. That."

"Okay. To go all philosophical, forget tomorrow. Forget eternity. Let's be right here, right now. If he's watching, let's give him something good to watch."

"Aaaaaaugh."

"You're not into creepy God voyeurism?"

"No."

"Pretty sure we don't get a vote. Still going to make the best of it."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

He did come back the next day, she did answer the door.

The sense of surreal in his presence ramped up even further when she saw him unpacking items that were very specific in origin – things that were available on Mindoir during her childhood. She was absolutely fascinated with a frisson of the eerie as it looked like he was going to make… bread.

She'd told… Yased… when he was still Kolyat… about this but…

Again… how?

Knowing that her father made bread was easy for him to know relatively. Yased could have told him at any point. Making that bread was as 'impossible' as reproducing her synesthesia aura. She didn't remember how to make the bread herself, that was the whole problem. How could he?

He smiled at her and said "There was one step to baking you could not reproduce. It was not through lack of memory, Lasam."

She looked at all the ingredients, and they looked the same as all the times she had tried it herself.

He indicated what she recognized as… what looked like a starter. Not dough, not really, not yet. He confirmed her conclusion by saying "Mindoir has a unique blend of yeast in the air. It was not native, but an adaptation of the yeast variants brought from Earth. You would be unable to reproduce the flavor without access to that specific yeast blend."

She asked "You went to Mindoir?"

"Yes and no. I would be unable to transport the yeast directly as the relays are not open, but I was able to obtain and duplicate the composition."

"How… do you know this?"

"Are you curious?"

"Obviously."

"Good."

"You're not going to tell me."

"No, I am not going to tell you. Not now. Now I am going to bake bread." He indicated the starter. "You can make your own with that starter. I will give you instructions on how to keep it viable."

"You're going to give me… the recipe for my father's bread?"

"Yes, Cara."

And she was crying again.

He worked silently as she watched. Bread took its time and could not be accomplished on any schedule but it's own. Senar didn't say it, but her father had. She'd watched her father make it so many times and she'd tried herself, she knew all the ingredients and the proportions… and of course… of course it was the place itself that made it distinct. Made it the best bread because it was made of home.

In that moment her perspective shifted, her feet dangling over the counter, talking to someone she loved who was making her bread because it was her favorite thing.

Something occurred to her, one line of the proposed syllogism she was supposed to work through over time, like yeast rising, falling into place with contemplation and demonstration of a principle.

He'd been able to override her will since Intai'sei. That meant… that meant he could have stopped her… from moving forward with Yased's surgery. He hadn't been helpless. He'd had all the power he needed to halt what she'd thought he couldn't halt. He had known… he could say those words and change her mind.

And he hadn't. He had knowingly… hating every moment of it… gone through with it for his son's sake, for her sake, and not for his.

He had… waited… to use the power he had to protect her, and not himself.

He was right and he never would have blamed her, never would have hurt her, because he knew he was responsible in the end for the choice made.

He had never been helpless.

Her mind went blank except for gratitude, the answer to why and how he knew anything about her didn't matter, not really. What mattered was what he did with it. The answer was that he loved her and he knew her and there was no reason to hide it, only express it.

He didn't want to lie to her anymore, just like she didn't want to lie to him. There was no reason to lie. The truth was scary and as yet unknown fully, but it was the truth and they would rise to the challenge together. There was nothing to fear in an aura or from bread, nothing to fear from the time she had thought she had overridden his will but hadn't, nothing to fear from the moment when he really had overridden her will.

The galaxy had transformed and he was a God and somewhere, in all the chaos and choices, he had spent his time, his effort and his love to solve the mystery of her father's forgotten bread so it would no longer be forgotten. As he searched for Sooth. As he planned to end the things she had always opposed – ignorance and suffering and death.

She wanted to tell him she loved him, so much, the way that she'd wanted to tell her father, her mother, every minute they were alive, but she knew they knew. They always knew, and so did he. She had told them, just as she had told him, but there was peace and satisfaction also in moments of knowing that she did not have to say it, that it was so very obvious and took up so much space.

The kitchen was silent as he worked, as she watched, hungry in so many ways for answers and for bread and imagining she'd get both, partly afraid that it would be the wrong answers, the wrong bread…

But with the faith that he'd get it right or he wouldn't attempt it, that whatever it was, it would be perfect in its own way.

When it was baking Garrus wandered through and said "That smells awful." She laughed and kissed him and he said "What? He made you cry again, didn't he?"

Senar said "Yes, but eventually that effect will fade."

She said "I doubt it."

Garrus twitched his nose and said "What Spirits-called hell are you two cooking up in here?"

She said simply "Bread."

He repeated "Smells awful."

"It isn't." She didn't want to explain, yeast colonization being one of those things that made Turians sick, something she had to be careful to avoid if she ever cooked for him. For now she stuck to doing dishes. Russ was the superior chef and as long as he was available, and he was always available, she was happy to watch and learn.

"Good. Gotta go, might return when the air clears."

She suspected he wanted to give them time together. She was careful to make sure Russ and Garrus had time together with her physical absence but her Spiritual blessing.

The bread was perfect, kigi nut butter included. For that first bite, and the next, her eyes were closed, memory flooded with reclaimed moments where she hadn't failed to remember, she had only failed to be there, and that was okay.

She redefined 'impossible' to Miracle.

She had Faith.


	72. Chapter 72

Senar brought gifts and company, debate and a little Asari girl named Kimin.

He arrived with her in his arms, Cara opened the door and Kimin said "Hi! He's a bad guy and he glows now!"

She was very excited.

There was also a varren named Kerplunk.

Senar explained "We have corresponded and I was dismayed to learn that Kimin lost her family during the attack on the Citadel. I thought perhaps she would enjoy meeting you."

"Of course, come on in!"

Kimin loved the apartment. Kimin loved Kerplunk. Kimin loved fruit. Kimin whispered loudly that his name was really Benis but that was a secret.

Cara told her confidentially "He does have a lot of names."

Kerplunk loved Russ. Love at first tackle for both of them, really.

Cara sat on the couch after dinner, Kimin's head on her lap as the little girl chattered, gesticulated, told every secret she knew in a whisper that could be heard upstairs, and fell asleep with her arms wrapped around Cara's thigh.

Garrus leaned over and said "She's not letting go, is she?"

"Nope."

Senar asked "Shall I take her home?"

Cara said "No, let her sleep. Where's home?"

"She has been staying in one of the communal spaces for those displaced after the invasion."

"Well, we've got communal space here." She looked at Garrus, who nodded.

Russ said "Kerplunk and I are going to go scare some people and possibly get arrested, it's gonna be great."

That was nice, she needed to go for a walk.

Well, really, more of a gallop.

Cara said "We need trees, and soon."

Senar left for the evening, Garrus set up one of the bedrooms for a little girl to the best of his ability and Russ carried her up to bed with a hyper vigilant varren at his heels who started to whine when Russ tried to leave the room, so Russ stayed with them both, letting Kerplunk up on the bed, which was a historical precedent that was never going to change.

Kimin never went home because she was already there.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Relays did slowly open up, but they were still waiting for the relay to Palaven to reunite with family.

Senar asked them to consider a trip out to an obscure location in an unknown system with a newly opened relay.

There they would find the trees they needed but he said nothing more except that they could pack light, they would find what they needed there.

They didn't travel in a Reaper, which would have really freaked her out, but in a ship of sleek design that had Drell flair and amenities, the trip fast, only about six hours.

When they landed there was a glorious expanse of landscaping and a beautiful farm house with surrounding garden and yes… trees. Trees she'd never seen before. The architecture looked familiar and as Kimin ran past with Kerplunk racing ahead, she asked Senar "Is it safe for them here?"

"Yes. No local wildlife, the climate and composition is comparable to Mindoir in many ways. Foliage is transplanted and engineered."

"Why does it look familiar? It's beautiful."

"It is a replica of the Hameau de la Reine of Versailles architecturally. Inside is more functionally modern but the style is maintained."

Garrus asked "It's a replica of what?"

Cara said "It's called The Queen's Hamlet, a place on Earth… France." She was stunned into silence as Senar smiled at her and she wondered again… how he knew.

Kimin came running back, grabbed Garrus's hand and they were off toward a grove of trees that were… red and white? She squinted and said "What kind of trees are those?"

Senar offered her his arm, she took it, and they walked at a more sedate pace until they got closer and the trees got more foreign as they approached. It seemed to have red and white…fruit? Red leaves, white bark. She couldn't really believe what she was seeing, but the general air of surreal dream state carried her through reaching out and picking one, which seemed to be…

A cupcake.

Senar said "I believe their name is red velvet."

The cupcake had a stem, and a thin transparent film that peeled off. Senar said informatively "An entire cake provided too much of a burden on the stems and branches and the trees would have been too large, so a small adjustment was required."

She asked "It's really edible?"

"Yes."

"I don't have words."

"You do not need to have words. Have a cupcake." He picked one and walked over to where Garrus had Kimin on his shoulders with her admiring the tree. He offered to her, it disappeared and then she picked four more.

They were so good.

She was growing accustomed to Miracles.

She took a deep breath and walked over to them, Kimin's mouth cream cheese smeared and beaming. Garrus said "There's what now?"

"We can begin planning on what it is you would like to do here if you choose to stay part time or full time. This planet is in an undeveloped region, you are the only residents, security and transport can be easily managed. You can do what you wish with the space. Cara might enjoy a research facility. Any expansion is viable. You might enjoy access to Reaper advancements in weaponry. I do not believe that there will be widespread war, but there will always be the potential for localized conflict. To that end you might have a political think tank or coordination of rescue aid efforts. You can develop any combination of how you choose to split your time and interests. The planet is unclaimed as it lacked any infrastructure availability previously. I can provide infrastructure and security. Consider how or if you would like to expand."

"What kind of advancements are we talking about?"

"I have prototypes if you would care to review them. There is no dedicated facility for further development yet, but there are work spaces available for you, Cara and Hemorus to plan how you might care to occupy yourselves and you can draw up plans of what it is you wish to construct."

So that's how they got a planet, a French farmhouse, cupcake trees and anything else they wanted because this God was cool like that.

The house wasn't really varren proof and a lot of French replica furniture and large decorative pieces were dragged into the side yard by Kerplunk and only partly buried. They left it because Cara said "It was a reminder about planning versus results" and because Russ thought it was funny and the more delicate pieces that were not Turian friendly ended up lopsidedly reminded of the fate of monarchy and interior decorators.

Cara smiled and said "It's officially a 'sculpture garden'"

Also, about fifty red velvet cupcakes were Kerplunk's limit of consumption. If anybody was curious, which apparently Russ, Kimin and Kerplunk were, but they were not any longer and all three had to be hosed off in the 'sculpture garden' before they were let back inside.

The kitchen area was huge, composed of full levo and full dextro kitchens side by side with an impressive farmhouse slab table in the middle of the space.

Kerplunk ate anything and everything without having an allergic reaction. Russ fed Kerplunk under the table, and that was another historical precedent that was not going to change.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

When the relays did open up, they had visitors, lots and lots of visitors, leading to new residents, lots and lots of residents.

Cara had become fascinated by the potential of genetics using Reaper technology, of which red velvet cupcake trees had been proof of concept.

Senar would not tell her exactly how he did it, but would feed her small pieces of technology and code with missing pieces she would need to puzzle out in order to comprehend and apply to further development.

Yes, she could have cheated and used the direct link on her Omni Tool to all the Reaper technology available… but she enjoyed the puzzle more than she would have enjoyed having it fed directly to her.

The farmhouse hosted many discussions regarding the disposition of the available technology from curing disease to curing death. Garrus and Cara deferred the immortality thing, but Russ said he was taking the deal as soon as possible because Kerplunk was a menace.

She wasn't really. Okay, she was, but not a dangerous menace.

Okay, she was definitely a dangerous menace.

But they loved her and she loved them and she never bit anyone. It was mostly high-impact love and Russ could take it better than Cara could. Fortunately Kerplunk was also very smart and did not play rough with little Asari girls or little human women in ways that she could with permission to launch a full-body tackle at an eight-foot tall Turian biotic at any time.

Lots of furniture broke so that's how they got simple and then more complicated manufacturing and replication units.

Russ and Garrus spent a lot of time with guns. Very exciting guns. They were not referred to as toys, but they were clearly toys. They had names with lots of impressive numbers and classifications that made them sound exciting and dangerous and definitely not toys.

Kimin wanted to be like Cara more than anything in the worlds, so they spent a lot of time being studious together.

Rather than go to Palaven when the relay opened up, a lot of Cipritine Vakarians came to them for a visit. That's how they got a Vakarian Madlis and a lot more people who liked exciting and complicated and thoughtfully named guns and definitely did not call them toys.

Somewhere in the middle of this, there appeared herds of favorite things to eat for Turians, shallow bodies of water where no sinking was possible but fish were, and to Garrus's absolute delight… a pack of flying white virce that he was assured were not venomous, were not poisonous… but were absolutely beautiful and did he mention… flying virce?

"FLYING VIRCE, CARA!"

He was happy about that.

He had to figure out how to catch and domesticate one, but Senar wasn't allowed to tell him how. He'd figure it out.

Vilarene decided she would enjoy a medical research facility for Turian concerns and Senar provided that technology, working with her on a preliminary list of the most pressing Turian issues and research into how to best provide service. Yased had extended his interest in medical training in Cipritine and assisted Vilarene, extending Turian interests to Drell interests and the planet became a destination for those seeking therapy for complications of Kepral's Syndrome.

Tensir lost a Councilor as a son, but was certainly consoled by having a son that had his own planet and a God at his service. He was less interested in the guns part, but did integrate his work with Vilarene's. He and Solana established a Turian embassy on the planet as well as a clearing house for pooling resources to address Turian needs and provide aid.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

About nine months after arrival on the planet that had been named Sanctuary, one night after Kimin had gone to bed, Senar, Cara, Garrus and Russ sat around the table with golden moonlight streaming in, pools of simulated candlelight, a fire, the remains of a sample of the new crop of caramel cupcakes on Cara's plate and a locally-brewed Turian ale for Garrus and Russ.

Senar said "I have worked on developing and extending what is possible from Reaper capability. It has been possible for me to network to Reaper systems, but I have been unique in that capability. Reapers have had the capability to encapsulate existing consciousness, and I have further developed that to a method of duplicating existing consciousness for encapsulation and transfer to a new platform. Just as I have been capable of being in several places at once, now it becomes possible for others to do the same. Hemorus has undergone successful integration of functional immortality, which does not mean that he cannot die. His consciousness however will be capable of recording and imprint. He can be recreated from backup samples of DNA and those recordings. He has had physical upgrades but of course any physical platform can experience catastrophic failure."

Russ said "Especially with Kerplunk around."

Senar smiled in agreement and said "I know that Cara and Garrus have not chosen immortality, but there is another possibility I wish for you to all consider. Cara and Garrus, it is possible for you both to duplicate yourselves using the method I have refined and made possible. This would make it possible for Cara and I to spend time with each other. It would make it possible for Garrus and Hemorus to spend time with each other."

There was a moment where Cara watched, blindsided and spinning, and as she looked to Garrus, he was looking at Russ. Blue flare surrounded Russ and the ale bottle in his hand exploded to showers and shards.

She did the only reasonable thing that occurred to her to do.

She ran away.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

It wasn't Garrus that came to find her, and she knew it wouldn't be. It was Senar.

She was leaning against the trunk of a tree she was too panicked to identify. It was dark. He had walked to her unerringly.

She recalled the conversation Garrus and she had had after Senar had first appeared in his glowing Godly glory.

'He said there's a lot he can't tell me. Yet, anyway.'

'No doubt. We'll find out. When he's ready, not when we are.'

And here it was. That one big thing where he was ready and she was not. She was panting from exertion, tipped her head back to the bark and said "Why would you do that?"

Senar stepped closer and said simply "Recall your kiss, Lasam."

"You made me do that."

His smile was gentle with that cast of Godly knowing to his expression and certainty in his voice. "I bid you hold still. With that you had no choice. Kissing me was a choice."

"No… you told me…"

"I asked you to kiss me… because it was the end of my life, and because… you wished to. Those conditions fulfilled, you were free to kiss me."

"No… you informed me that I wished to… you made me!"

"I will concede that in our time together I have made you want to kiss me… but I did not compel you to do so then."

"No… it…"

"Lasam, I cannot argue this with you if you have no faith in my answer and I will not demonstrate the difference between desire and compulsion. Not now. You wished to kiss me before that moment and in that moment. You belong to Garrus and until you belong to me you must rely upon your memory of that kiss as one of the myriad reasons I would never give you up. Remember all the times your breath caught and your heart sped, the times you slept in my arms, the time you held me to you and did not let me go willingly."

"I wasn't convincing in that case."

"There was nothing you could do to convince me to allow you to sacrifice yourself. I had already been convinced to love you."

"What about Yased? Irikah?"

"Asking you to make a duplicate of yourself would be utilizing technology I have developed and embraced myself. My selves. I will remain a father to Yased. He is considering helping me reconstruct Rakhana, make her a habitable home again for our people. I can share, pool my experiences, I am several places at once. So can you if you choose that. That might occur for you in the future, but for now consider separate selves. That must be a choice you make without my capacity for undue influence for many reasons, some of which I cannot explain to the woman who makes that choice, but only to the woman who allows me to be hers by that choice. You must have faith that I may press you to consider your truth and mine, truths that could be ours, but I will not force your hand, I will not allow coercion to set the course of our potential Path together. You must be certain you are free to choose. I know it is not only your choice, that you must know those you love are cared for first before you choose me. As for Irikah, I have done what is now possible to fulfill that vow, to take that Path with her, for her. I do not know if I qualified for reaching the Shores after the Crucible. My consciousness remained, my body only was gone. To keep the vow to Irikah that I made with her as her wrist bound, I recreated my body, I created a self dedicated to the Path Irikah walked. He died in hope of meeting her across the sea, to carry to her news of our son and that he would not arrive, he would choose instead to live forever. I cannot share experiences with that self, he is gone, but if it was at all possible to reach Irikah at the Shores, he is with her. I will not die again. This responsibility will not end. I can share it with you. All the possibilities, all the information, all the choices. I wish for you to be there with me. I know you want that. I know you want me. What remains is the courage to admit to your bond mate that truth."

She closed her eyes and said "You asked us all together… why didn't…"

"Because I know you, Lasam. Asked alone you might have potentially refused, believing the offer was solely for you or solely for me. If I had not offered it to Garrus and Hemorus, you would not have seen their faces. You know they want this. You know they will not take it if you will not."

"No pressure…"

"There is nothing to be lost. It requires only letting go of how life flowed before to embrace how it could flow now. There are Paths to be gained, loves to be expressed. To embrace them you must do what you never do, Lasam. You must be selfish. You are in love with Garrus and you can have forever with him, but part of you… the part promised… she desires expression. She can have it. I doubt it would be difficult for you to allow Garrus or Hemorus to express what they feel for each other, as you feel the potential in them keenly. It would be a relief for you to know Hemorus was loved as is now possible. Garrus would never give you up and you would never give him up. I do not ask that of you. You would never share yourself and give in essence half of yourself to each of us. I do not ask that of you. You demand to be Whole. I can accommodate that. You can cling to once and idealistic forever or allow twice and literal forever. You must find it in yourself to honor the truth you saw, the truth you feel, the truth you know, in a newly possible way, or you must close those Paths for all."

"And that's it? I say no and you're… you're gone?"

"Do you want me and my newly possible choices gone?"

As always now she noted the tone in his voice as it seemed he asked questions he knew the answers to, because his voice no longer held any pressure of curiosity but the rhythm of carrying forward conversation. It was the Socratic method translated into infuriating Drell certainty. Still, she knew the answer as well as he seemed to know it. "No. Never."

"Then I am here for you. Always. In whatever capacity you allow. Just as Hemorus would be there each day for Garrus were he to refuse this possibility. Lasam, I can grant you new choices. You can tell me what you want."

"I thought I had to beg."

"All I require, Lasam, is the word yes from your lips. I will not coerce, nor will it cost you any dignity you wish to preserve. Perhaps coercion would be easier, giving you the excuse that you had no choice. You have all the choices, Cara."

"And if I am a massive disappointment? What if I embarrass you in front of all your God friends?"

"My Godhood can belong to you. I can give you that destiny if you choose. With or without me."

"Eternity sounds… kinda boring… alone."

"I have my memories of you and the rehabilitation of a galaxy to occupy me, but I wish to make more memories with you."

"Well, you're just getting started on eternity. Novelty hasn't worn off yet." She realized she was babbling, stalling, unable to comprehend.

"I need you, Cara. I offer love, I offer eternal life and purpose, I offer devotion, I offer you all the knowledge of the cycles, I offer you the chance to make real change and set the course of the future with me. I offer denial of lust if required but never denial of love. I offer you no interference in your life with your bond mate and a natural death if you choose. I will not force eternity upon you if you do not wish it. If any of those temptations or all of those temptations will sway you, please consent to being swayed."

She'd been so far past swayed so often it seemed redundant to admit it. He knew. She said "And if I really, really… want to kiss you now? Just like I did then?"

"Then that is encouraging but not yet the word I wish to hear. The woman I will kiss does not yet exist and you must choose for her."

She thought of Garrus, and then immediately about the way he and Russ had looked at each other. "They want to, don't they?"

"Beyond a doubt. They deserve time together. As do we."

"I should talk to Garrus."

"You can and you will, but you know that you set his answer and you know what answer he wishes."

"So… once again you can't directly seduce me, you have to… bribe my bond mate's best friend?"

"Hemorus is my friend and family. I would wish to aid him regardless of your involvement. I do not require that you beg as I would be waiting in stubborn eternity for that, as Garrus informed me and he was correct. You distressingly require all galactic and personal problems to be solved before you will allow yourself to be with me. Death used to be a prerequisite, but as I will no longer die I must improvise. I can only do so much. I may be last in line in terms of your priorities, but I can move that line if that is all that stands in my way."

"You're not… have never been… last in line."

"Then to be more clear… you have placed your desire for me last in your line of priorities that may be considered. Things that make others happy you do for them without question. Things that might make you happy… you would defer that forever as long as someone else required some sacrifice from you. I will not ask you to sacrifice anything for me. Not your bond mate. Not your life with him. Not the love you have for him. He will be with you. Nothing need stand in my… her… your… their… our… way."

"So you're appealing to my martyrdom and sacrificial impulses here?"

"In part, but you also consider me somewhat of a delinquent child and you feel you must look after me. For these and other reasons I appeal to you. Is there any other way to gain your cooperation, Lasam? If so, tell me what it is and I will attempt that as well."

She considered that Garrus had not followed her, that she'd seen their faces, that they wanted… and she wanted… and it was possible… and that it was up to her.

She had felt the fact that Russ loved Garrus every day since she'd found out. A Path they would have been taken had she not been in their way.

If she knew Senar had the woman he loved, the woman he'd earned, the Manipar promised, that they could create new possibilities where before there had been death, denial and condemnation…

She felt like begging but didn't, eyes taking in the glow that lit him in the dark, that was now destined, literal and marking him as hers, how he wished to see himself. She ran to him, closed her eyes tightly and wrapped her arms around his waist. His arms closed around her.

She asked "Will you tell… her… how you know the things you know about me?"

"I will tell her the truth of anything she wishes to know."

"But you won't tell me?"

"Not now, Lasam. Perhaps someday. Perhaps you choose mutually to share who you are with each other, and you will learn that way. It is not a thing of menace."

"Are you afraid of making me… jealous of my other me?"

"Of course, Lasam. I am a God, regardless of whether or not you truly credit that reality. You may perhaps believe you must send her to me in order to be certain I do not ruin the galaxy without her oversight or ruin your domestic life in order to get your attention. Whatever your motives, Lasam, simply say yes and I will accept your reasons. I do not believe she will be disappointed in what I can offer her to console her for her noble sacrifice."

"So being with you is really that good of a deal?"

"I believe so, yes."

"Ignorance is bliss?"

"You already have bliss with your bond mate, Lasam, do not be greedy. The woman I will belong to must know that I cared for her before she existed, that I preserved for her what will belong to her only and not to you. Yes, I have made you curious and on purpose. If she allows it, I will tell you or she can tell you herself. You must trust to yourself to assuage your own curiosity or not. That will be for her to decide. One step at a time. You choose, and she steps upon a new Path with me."

"Then… yes."

He kissed the top of her head, his hand to the back of her head, his voice rough "Thank you, Lasam."

"How do we do… everything?"

"Leave that to me."

"Can I stay here for just a minute?"

"Please."

They stood, mutual tension dissolving in their shoulders relaxing, breath easing. They stood grounded, rooted like trees grown together and inseparable. She moved first but not soon and they walked back in solemn silence, no longer touching. When they got to the kitchen Russ demanded "Cara, I want a pity clone. I deserve a pity clone."

Garrus admonished "Don't call it that."

Russ countered "Don't call him it! Wait. I don't care what you call him, I want one."

Cara looked at Garrus and said "This was an ambush. He wanted me to see your faces. I'm glad I did. Russ, I… okay. Everyone who wants to do this, say aye."

Lips moved around 'a' sounds, Russ drowning them out by saying loudly "AYE THREE TIMES. I mean it. I should be the only one that gets a vote. He's a damned God, why does he need a pity clone?"

Garrus said to her "I saw his face too. Now I see your face. You okay?"

She smiled "Yeah. Weird. But okay."

Garrus said gently "We're gonna miss these guys?"

She said "But they'll be happy."

Russ said cheerfully "Senar, I haven't said this, but I love you and I won't take that back."

Senar said solemnly "What I wish is for all in this room to find happiness."

Russ said, scooting his chair closer to Garrus's, who was waving him away as Russ observed "As Gods go, Senar, you do not suck."

Cara said "I'm going to run away again. Right about now."


	73. Chapter 73

As with other impossible things to comprehend, they didn't comprehend but they tried to accept the impossible in their own ways.

Beyond the momentous choice of some newly-possible Reaper mitosis because sex and love and all that stuff, then came the practical questions of… visitation rights? Mistaken identity?

Cara had thought they would perhaps have to establish different residences because… obviously.

Russ snorted "You should know better, Cara. Kimin and Kerplunk are going to be fine with an extra Garrus. I won't be fine without being able to see them, and they won't understand if I'm not here. You still have a relationship with Senar, your Garrus will still have a relationship with me because he'll pine otherwise. I also, silly woman, happen to love you and I'd miss you, thanks for saying the same, dummy. By the way, I call the kitchen table the first… week… probably, so be prepared."

"I didn't think I had to say it, you're so smart, I figured you knew. What IS it with you guys and tables?"

"You don't know?"

"I don't want to know."

"Then why did you ask?"

"Forget it! How do we explain two Garruses?"

"You just did. 'There are two Garruses now because Hemorus Vakarian is a very lucky man.' Short sentence. People come here to see cupcake trees made by a new God of Reapers and flying virce, you think they're going to accept that but be unable to accept clones? What are they going to do about it, protest? To whom and about what and what would come of that? Nothing. I win, nobody else loses, they're maybe just confused for a little while. It's a new reality, Cara, get on board."

"I suspect that's another table reference."

"Deal with it. And seriously, I have so many ideas."

"What do we do, have the two different Garruses wear different colors?"

"He's not going to be wearing much. Think of something else."

"What do we call them? These are practical questions."

"We'll figure it out. You have what, two different names, three potential last names and about six nicknames? We're staying and breaking more furniture."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

She had promised Garrus that immortality would be a decision they made together, but with new possibilities, turned out she kinda panicked and Garrus caught on fast. He got suspicious and asked "Where's Carousel?"

"Mmm… around."

"Cara?"

"Um."

"You didn't."

"I did."

"Weren't we going to make mutual decisions on that subject?"

"She sneezed."

"What?"

"She sneezed, I got scared."

"There are no pathogens here, virce."

"They could always develop."

"Not the way Senar tells it."

"She. Sneezed. I got scared. Now she's gonna be immortal. She'll be back when we are."

"You dove for the immortality thing?"

"For her. She can also visit Senar, and I'm sure she misses him. She was going to get old and get kitty arthritis and sneeze more and I couldn't take it."

"And I'm supposed to just accept that you're not going to hit me over the head and I wake up immortal?"

"You've still got a little while to make the right decision before that happens. I've got a button to talk to a God. It's nice. Plus, I know I said I'd do whatever you wanted forever and ever, but forever is really a thing now and I'm your Avah, so there."

"Virce…"

"Don't you WANT to live forever… with me?"

"Not sure that's the point."

"When you figure out what it is, let me know. In the meantime I'd suggest not sneezing, getting injured or getting inexplicably tired."

"Are you immortal?"

"No."

"Not yet."

"It's something we should do together. No hitting over the head."

"Or not yet, anyway."

"Now you've got it. Keep in mind, death is overrated as a learning experience. I should know."

"You sprinted after it the second time."

"I meant well."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Nobody backed out or changed their minds or tried to change anybody else's mind.

Russ told Kimin "You and I are gonna have the house to ourselves for about two weeks and after that, there will be two Garruses and Cara will be back and we'll all be together again."

Kimin looked at Garrus and asked "Will the Garruses like me? What if they don't like me?"

Garrus grinned at her "Take that back. No me would be that stupid. Plus I don't like you, I love you."

"Can he like me too?"

"Try to stop us."

"Okay!"

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

So Cara was going to lose two weeks of her life that would pass in a blink to start a new life she wouldn't know anything about unless she decided she would.

Confusing, but not impossible.

Blessed.

Russ would be happy. Two Garruses in her life could not possibly be bad.

Senar would have his Manipar and her Garrus would not worry about losing her to Drell machinations because she was both lost and found simultaneously.

She was serene as Garrus told her he'd see her soon, as Senar told her he'd see her soon and both were true and not true, particle and wave in the paradox of added light to an experimental obstacle course.

She was grateful she didn't have to explain it to Garrus's parents or sister and he said he'd handled it.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

She woke up, or was getting there slowly. Peacefully. Calmly. She heard the sound of waves and then opened her eyes. Arms were around her.

Not… Turian arms.

Drell arms.

Glowing Drell arms.

She was… not Limayeth. Not virce. Or she was… and she'd always remember… and she'd miss Garrus but… she… knew the other Cara would take care of him. She knew he'd be happy, blissful, and so would the other Cara.

Now she was Lasam, Siha and Drala'tem.

It might be venom, might be whatever procedure she'd undergone… she was not as anxious as she'd thought she be. She was made of stillness and wanting to stay, wanting to know what was present and what was possible.

She would live a new life and miraculously her first chosen Path would continue.

Senar said "You miss the sound of waves." His voice was the warm whisper she hadn't heard from him in a long time, the whisper she missed from him, the whisper of confidences and intimacies, his mouth at her ear. The voice he'd been able to speak with when she'd woken from pained nightmares and he eased her back to dreamless sleep. Being in his arms was familiar. He was her new home.

She did miss the sound of waves. She hadn't seen them often. She hadn't spent much of her shore leave on literal shores but she loved the waves, the sound. The fact that she missed oceans seemed to be such a tiny thing in the scope of everything else that had happened, what with being newly born, newly created and being with him. But the fact that he knew it? Huge. Pivotal. A burning question in bold. Now she could ask, now the answer could belong to her, so she asked "Please tell me. How do you know that, how do you know everything else you couldn't possibly know?"

"When I became aware of myself after the Crucible, my mind reached for you first. It was my first conscious act, my first connection to reality after dissolving into blue light. I wanted to know about you and that information came to me. I knew where you were, I knew what you were feeling. I thought that was how it would be, that I would ask a question and the information would arrive. It was the first and most transformative, profound experience of the new power I had. I began to ask other questions with seemingly infinite capacity to sense and formulate as I became aware of the locations I could occupy as a controlling influence. Yet shortly after my success with you, with the immediate questions I asked, I thought of discovering how Yased was. My search produced no information. I knew nothing of him or about him. When Hemorus left your conscious awareness I tried to find him in the same way as I found you in order to aid him, but he was not there for me as you were. I found Hemorus through Citadel biometrics once he left your sight. I found Yased through mundane Omni Tool connection. My immediate explanation as to how I was connected to you seemed to be possibly that the AI at the Crucible had clearly read your mind and I had some of that capacity. I did not question it, I accepted it as necessary and vital, a gift that had begun with that creature violating your mind and me violating your will, with me hoping that I could continue to cherish the gift of communion with you. Yet you considered yourself severed from me, grieving, and I knew you were not communing with me in the same way. I sought to find a way to comfort you, I used your Omni Tool as I had with Hemorus and Yased. I was undeserving of communion with you yet I craved and needed the connection to your inspiration and I thrived upon it. The full answer I formulated as time passed and I gathered experience and information. I was able to compare the quality of my connection to you to my lack of connection to others. It involved the circumstances of your resurrection, in how you were rebuilt after your death. Ms. Lawson is a genius but she layered that genius on a heavy framework of Reaper technology Cerberus had secured at the cost of many of their agents being knowingly or unknowingly indoctrinated. Information that I could access reflecting your perception of yourself extended back only to the moment you were rebuilt enough to function, to become aware of self. You have Reaper technology woven through every system of your body. Drala'tem, you are a Reaper. I cannot fail to know every moment of your existence any more than I could fail to know my own. My control over all Reapers included you."

Whatever answer she expected, it hadn't been that. Complete knowledge of and control over her by Crucible fiat? He was not A God, he was HER God? She choked out "Still? Right now?"

"Yes. Always."

"Control me, how? How? What do you mean?"

"I have not tried. At first it did not occur to me to attempt to control you, I only feel blessed by communion with you. Once I was aware the potential existed I did not wish to attempt to control you without your consent. I know how my will works now, how I believe it will work with us. Perhaps now would not be a wise time to demonstrate, but I do wish to choose a time to explore that potential together if you will allow it."

"When have we ever… ever… had a 'wise' time? When will that be?"

"Perhaps never. Wisdom is gained from experience. We have been, perhaps always will be, the first to have certain opportunities, the first to make certain mistakes."

"And now you could… you… 'believe' you know how it will work? Are you saying you might not be able to stop yourself from… controlling me?"

"That is why you needed to make the choice to place yourself in my arms without any enticements or demonstrations from me other than to have you know that I knew of your hopes and desires and I wished to fulfill them for you. Control without your understanding was too much of a temptation for me, impossible to predict the effect it would have upon you. If you would allow a demonstration, we can explore proving to ourselves what is possible and how it will work. The first would be a verbal command accompanied by my will that you take a simple action to demonstrate how my will becomes yours. The second would be an action where I prove that it is not a matter of words or venom, but purely will on my part. We will discover your response to your will being vacated by my own. The third thing I wish to do would be a demonstration of that potential beyond simple movement. From there, Drala'tem, I hope you will begin to feel what it is I want for you, for us. All you ever need do would be to will that I stop."

"If I can. If my will's vacated entirely as you believe, I won't be able to conceive of the idea of you stopping?"

"You need only feel the slightest urge to have something stop. I will know. You will not need to say it, I will strive to have already stopped before you can form words to ask. I will strive to never take an action that would result in you wishing that I stop."

"Are you sure you can?"

He misinterpreted her on purpose, teasing. "Am I sure I can stop? Drala'tem, at this point I wish to confirm that I can start. Now, if you allow, I will attempt it and we will both learn what control over you means. May I?"

He was right, that was a huge truth. That would have never occurred to her and he could fascinate her all he wanted, she never would have guessed 'By the way, do I happen to be a Reaper?' It occurred to her that he could also make sure it never occurred to her. Sliding weakness began at the top of her spine and traveled down, heart slamming and a vivid flush rushing to her face. He seemed to no longer worry about undue influence or inability to convince her, his voice at her ear and his knuckles along the side of her throat as he reminded her "You must say yes, Drala'tem."

"C-can I run away again?"

"Can you? Where exactly would you run?" He sounded intrigued, curious and not worried in the least.

She burst into laughter, because yes… "So… you could just see out of my eyes where I went and you could… make me… decide to run back?"

"I believe so, yes. Do you wish to try that?"

No. No, she didn't. "S-simple action, you said? To test? Yes. Do that."

The breeze from the surf had blown her hair over her face. He said in his warm whisper "Pull your hair to the other side, over your shoulder."

Her hands moved without thought or intention, did as he asked. The skin of her throat was now fully exposed and his lips moved there, the moment calling shivers from her in several ways. Her movement hadn't… felt… like anything. Proof of concept, devastating and real in a terrifyingly seamless way. Not the conflicted drag of compulsion but pure thoughtless action taken with the casual acceptance of the necessity and benefit of breathing.

He said between kisses at her throat "I hear… I feel… I see… everything you hear and feel and see. You will become thoughtless, mindless. Have faith that I will be thoughtful and mindful, Drala'tem. You are safe with me. Have faith also that I have wanted you thoughtless and mindless and would have made you so long before the Crucible, that this is not a new desire or new goal I could accomplish, but the same desire, the same goal reaffirmed and certain. Something that occurred to me as a desire as you gazed at me with sea green confusion through veiling lashes over a mug of hot chocolate. Something that solidified into a necessary goal over a Pon-Ifa board. Something I would have done with venom and whispers, my hands and mouth. The next action you take will be without hearing any words of command, only the effect of my will. I will ask you to move. You will change your position. Ready?"

How could she possibly be ready?

"Because you are safe with me, Drala'tem. I promise you."

"That's a biiiiiig promise."

"One I will keep. Remember you are precious to me and I would never harm you."

"That's an order?"

"That is a suggestion. Are you still afraid?"

"Very much so."

"If it had been an order… you would not be afraid."

"What's the difference between you… thinking you don't want me to be afraid… and…?"

"Something I have learned, something I am learning. There is thought about action and then there is action. The difference between imagining making my arm move and making my arm move. I believe I have learned control and restraint… but if anything, anyone can make me lose it…"

"That'd be me."

"That would be you."

"Yikes."

"Do you wish to keep your fear?"

"Do I need it?"

"Never again."

"Are you afraid?"

"I am apprehensive and have been about the scale and scope of the truth. Your relationship with me has been painful and difficult, and I wish for the pain and difficulty to end, but I require your understanding of truth. I am the same in many ways as I was when I was alive, the same intellect, the same impulses. The same disguised and counted desires that being in your presence, having you in my memory evokes. If I could be tempted to lie, to take, again, it would be in service of the urge to be yours. Telling you a truth that might make you feel like an owned object while explaining how I withheld that information from you, from her, from them… yes, that invokes fear. The possibility that you might will that I separate my consciousness from yours would be unbearable and I must still risk it. I am fearful of that, of gaining your potential company only to lose it to horror and mistrust. My fear did not stop me from finding my way to you, to us finding our way to here."

"Am I going to be… an owned… object?"

"Never. That is not what I wish. That is not what you wish. Yet the capacity is there and always will be. You asked if Geth were slaves and I referred to them as tools. In your case, the potential for you to be a slave in truth is undeniable. Unlike the Geth, you do have will, you do have opinions and preferences, and I run the risk of making a mistake by exerting my control over you, horrifying you before I have an opportunity to convince you that we belong together, that the risk is dwarfed by the potential reward."

"So if I'm less afraid… you're less… apprehensive?"

"Possibly. Feeling what you feel is a gift, and is the experience that has defined and enriched my tenure as a God. I believe the more intention I have toward you, the more control I have over you. What defines you as a 'Reaper' cannot be undone. If I chose to have all Reaper technology removed from your body, that would still make you more of my intentional creation. You will never be less under my control than you are at this moment, and in this moment you are potentially entirely under my control. I wish to ease your fears, but in the past moments, Drala'tem, you learned of your nature, my nature, how they are entwined, and that made you afraid, but it also made you curious. The image of you running… and me catching you… you enjoyed that. I enjoyed you enjoying that. So perhaps we do not wish to dispense entirely with fear and perhaps it is not possible."

"I see… and I have always been afraid of you."

"This I know."

"So if I ask you… let me keep my fear… don't change it until it changes on its own… don't be tempted, don't take it from me, let me put it down or hold it tight…"

"Then that is your will. That is what I will do."

"But you'll experience that I'm afraid?"

"Always. And the paradox is that the only way you will be certain that your will is your own… would be to experience fear."

"So… absolute power corrupts absolutely and you do not wish to corrupt… us."

"There is comfort in some paradoxes. I found my connection to you so completely satisfying in communion that you were, as you always have been, exceptional. It never occurred to me to attempt to control you. I am yours, Drala'tem. I am not separate. What you feel… what you think… what you choose… creates our Path. I am motivated to keep you separate, keep your will inviolate, to provide me with living inspiration. Once you helped me be the man I wished to be, though I did not always succeed. But I am curious, I do wish to know, what power I have over you, what that can mean if you choose to allow me to use it. I have imagined so many ways to touch you, flow through your thoughts, create sensations that were not possible until now. You asked if you could be a disappointment to me. Imagine, Cara, all the ways I can create a moment between us and feel exactly what you feel as you feel it. Being selfish becomes giving and being giving becomes selfish."

"You have enough power over me to make anything happen and make me feel any way about it and I'd… never know the difference unless you wanted me to."

"You know the difference now. I wish for it to remain that way. I wish for you to be able to return always to a state where you know your mind is your own, your body is your own and you make your own choices."

"The logic goes in circles. You took venom control to gain Reaper control and now you have control over what you thought you would lose but now can't lose, though I could try to demand you lose it? But your defining choice remains in the fact that you believed the Crucible would result in your permanent death and in my happily ever after with another man."

"I did believe all of those things, that my life would be taken, that I would not endure in any form and that I would be denied both Shores and Manipar. I wish to create a circuit of that circle. That requires your trust and faith that I will take your inspiration and give you what you want to experience, and me experiencing that with you will lead to new inspirations."

"I wouldn't be here if I didn't… trust to your imagination." There was a slight bloom of fear around that statement, like a shallow and painless slice at something living, harmless but demonstrably red with blood in warm water. Like the fear and freedom of running and being caught, like his teeth and lips along the side of her throat. She said around harsh and nervous breath "Okay. Make me… change my position."

"As you wish, Drala'tem." She became aware of physical details that in her absorption in thought and shock she had not taken in. Thought stopped and she was pure motion and execution. The temperature here was a pleasure on her skin, the breeze something she felt magnified compared to the moment before. She was wearing green and gold in a dress of animated fabric, beautiful and seemingly alive, somehow spring and fall, the green uplifting, vibrant, the gold seeming to follow gravity. Then she was turned to look at him, her knees to either side of his thighs in soft, warm sand, her hands on his shoulders, aware of the caress of fabric flutters and aware of the way he looked at her with open adoration. He looked younger. He looked hopeful. There was a gleaming cobalt moon visible behind him. He was glowing, flowing, gold-limned green and black. He said "My original colors were black and silver. I find I have grown fond of green. I do not wish to change back. I wish to move forward. With you."

She was able to think again after the movement was completed, a rising sense of potential tabula rasa, a blank canvas she did not want to blot with the wrong thoughts. She could think new thoughts, began to wonder why she would want to be fearful at all with this chance. He deserved enthusiasm she hadn't allowed herself to feel. She said "Well, you're in luck. I love you."

His hand moved to cradle the side of her face, his thumb along what she believed was the same path where a tear had fallen at the Crucible. His eyes closed and then opened, and he said "We once discussed consent. You believed I could not give it, that I had no real choices. In many ways, Drala'tem, you also may have had no real choice. Everything may have been inafer i'mae from the moment I saw you and knew you to be Siha, the moment where gold light surrounded me in your mind. I can find your memory of that moment, my memory of that moment, and line them up together and they harmonize, whisper and sing to each other in impossible ways, defining how we are so different and how we are so alike. I cannot explain what we both saw, what we both felt in symmetrical and improbable faith in a moment that set the beginning and the course of our Path. I see Rightness, I see Fate, and if those are true, perhaps you had no choice and neither did I. As I do not wish another choice, I am content. I cannot offer you freedom from your Manipar, but that moment, finally shared, is all the answer I require as to whether or not I belong to you."

She smiled a gentle curve and said "I'm only… how old now? A few weeks? I suppose I don't qualify for age of consent anyway."

He smiled at her in such a way that meant she was woefully ignorant of reality again and she said with dawning realization "You didn't."

"I promised you truth, Drala'tem. I did."

"You kept… I'm… Garrus has…"

"Yes. I am the only person who would be able to detect a difference between you. You are older than the few weeks of your counterpart, but you are still only approximately two years old."

"Why?"

His face hardened to the lines of the relentless hunter he was behind any other guise and she recalled his comment about the fact that the more intent he had regarding her, the more control he had, and the man was… intent. He said "Look at me and ask me if I would ever give up the woman who told me yes."

"I thought the point was for me to be less frightened."

"Yet I promised you truth and some truths do not bend to that goal."

"How… much… of my mind is… how much do you know?"

"Everything. The stream of your moment to moment sensations, the patterns of the synthesis of your thoughts, all your experiences since you became viable under Project Lazarus. Beyond that, as you have access to your original memories, unaltered, so do I."

"Isn't that… distracting?"

"Being distracted by you began as a hobby and is now a Calling."

"What… is… the difference between her… and me?"

"You were molecularly and in consciousness identical at the moment of her creation, divergence only possible after that moment. She is also a Reaper inherently and then more so by definition as she is a creation of my intent. The difference I can detect is in the altered routing of her information. I cannot sever my connection to her, but I can place all of the information she generates into a blind directory that is accessible only through 'need to know' conditions where I choose that I do not need to know. That began at the moment I gave her to Garrus. My connection to you remains unbroken, you are and have been part of me since the Crucible."

"You gave her to the original Garrus?"

"For symmetry, I gave the original Garrus to Hemorus. They did see each other first, as Hemorus pointed out to you. The two duplicates are together, newly formed and at inception indistinguishable from their counterparts. Nobody received pity in any form. All symmetrically suited to their chosen destinies."

"Wait… so… now the duplicate Garrus is…"

"A Reaper. So is Hemorus after his alterations. So is the original Garrus, as I removed the systemic effects of his bond to you so he could bond with Hemorus. These truths I tell you, what you tell me, who we are, belong to you. You may tell these truths or not tell them, that is your choice. My hope is that you are happy, they are happy, and eventually the procedural and cost truth that they feared I would or could exact never materializes and fades as a concern. All still face the potential for further enhancement, treatment or chosen improvement, and the knowledge that I may have power over them might make them more cautious than they need be to embrace that opportunity. She has not experienced my control over her, only that I possess knowledge about her from unknown sources. Perhaps you would not wish for the nature of our relationship to be known, to have your autonomy potentially questioned. Perhaps you do not wish to meet yourself or him again and we will live in seclusion, perhaps here, perhaps elsewhere, devoted to each other. Who I am now, this body, was created with the intent that I be entirely yours. I wish to spend all my time with you as you allow. When I interact with them, it would be with another mind, another body, one that does not glow. They are my family and I will look after them as I will Yased. You are my heart and if you choose to keep me entirely to yourself, I would be pleased. I have attempted to preserve your options and will abide by whatever you wish in your contact with whomever you choose, to tell your truths as you require."

"So… all of their information goes to blind directories?"

"Yes. Any information I receive about them will be standard communication, security or health concerns through channels other than their direct perception of their lives. They have their privacy, their new lives, eternity if they wish it together, and I will keep them safe. I will be at their service. This way, Drala'tem, if anything happens to any of them, they could be restored to each other complete from the moment of their death or infirmity with no loss of memory. They would lose nothing of their experiences with each other due to misfortune. They will have access to immortality and whatever they wish in service, but for now I chose to move one step at a time. So if I wish to interact with her, and I will, and she will, it will be with a self that loves her, but knows he has no right to want her. She is no longer Manipar promised, that right belongs to you, my Manipar delivered. That self can experience what it is to be yours through shared link with me and will not be denied love, inspiration or purpose. Time can grant everyone security in their choices and build new, divergent and distinct identities as they find their feet on newly possible Paths I will facilitate. I wished for each person to feel as though they were gaining more than they lost. She will know that her existence did not keep Hemorus from the man he loved, or her bond mate from expression of that love. You will know that Garrus is adored and that he and the woman that is with him will have no reason to fear my pursuit. I did not wish for any one person to believe they chose the wrong Path to follow or remain upon."

"Why no… blind directory for me?"

"I considered it. I discovered I am vehemently opposed to the idea and here is where I fear my breaking point is defined, where I risk denying you a choice. The idea of having your will under my control does not make me fear, any mistake I make we can endure with your forgiveness, but the idea of you denying me your communion summons the greatest resistance in me, and that intent may be uncontrollable on my part. I likely will not permit it to happen for even a moment. I do not wish to be blind to you in any way. When I say 'I do not wish' for it to be so, that is on the order of saying I did not wish for Irikah to be tortured and killed or that I did not wish for you to sacrifice yourself. All of me stands opposed, though I am aware some of me should allow you that choice, that is where my lie would live. I would ask you to consider allowing me to demonstrate, to learn, to know your thoughts, know how you feel in each moment. Trust to my imagination and control. Trust to the strength of your curiosity and mine to carry us, if not to wisdom easily, then to discovery not possible before. You are my Music of the Spheres. I believe it is possible, Drala'tem, to share what I feel with you as well. We all have fears, hopefully none of them materialize if we are careful, if we are brave, if we are patient. If you had chosen to die a natural death with your bond mate, if you were finally gone, I knew I could, certainly would at some point of deferred temptation, recover you from archive, create you whole and begin again with you. I can imagine myself desperate for your inspiration, playing the memory of your life over and over, falling to solipsism of tu-fira and losing my connection to my responsibilities in my despair, finding no life in living, extending that detachment and dullness to others. I do not believe I can express to you what it means to me to be able to reach out to you and find you always there. I do not think I could bear an existence without that experience. I will not lie to myself or you and promise you that you always would have had a choice. I could promise you I have learned of the value of free will and I fear that in itself… is a lie, one I tell myself because I wish it to be true. What I do know is that I believe it is my duty as your Manipar, as a man who loves you and as a God with the potential to control you, that I wish and need to let you know you are loved, supported and desired. I can now do that for you between one heartbeat and the next. Part of me wishes to do that because I do not believe you should doubt or fear me so why should I permit doubt or fear? Is it not a Manipar's duty to find their mate? Make them feel their mate's devotion and love is more than enough compensation for each difficult step they took across the burning sands to reach them? Make them know they have found their home and their Path? What is the difference between swaying you with words and devotion, swaying you with venom and whispers, swaying you with will to express what is my truth when I know you love me and I love you? Why must I choose to forego any expression of those potentials if we can do it together? Is that not what I promised you, what I can now give you in every moment if you will it, if I will it? If you wished what was possible only in what was previously real, that remains to the bliss and bond of the woman who is with Garrus. With us, real will be redefined."

She whispered back his words with a shiver down her spine "Look at me and ask me if I would ever give up the woman who told me yes."

"Or the woman who told me no. These are my bare truths, Drala'tem. I believe in ways that cannot be questioned that I am yours and you are mine. I am offended by the idea that our ownership of each other could be questioned and that questioning is defined as a sin against Fate and Rightness. I will act to oppose any attempt to sever or doubt my right to you and your right to me. I believe I am the best potential man I can be with your inspiration and influence and without you I would be lost. I believe we will make the galaxy a better place, we will gather power to ourselves and we will use it as we must and ultimately grow to use it wisely. I believe we will make mistakes but we will learn from them."

"I believe I am here of my free will."

"I believe the concept of 'will' must become a cooperative thing, and not something owned by either of us. Giving must become selfish and selfish must become giving. Possibly the most selfish act I have performed in my life was to take your place at the Crucible. Possibly it was the most giving. Somehow, Drala'tem, it is both simultaneously from your perspective and mine. There is a new inspiration to be forged, that of harmonizing moments that create new things between us. Now would be an unwise time to demonstrate my control over you, but we have determined that we are unwise and I am not responsive to reason on the subject of you." He leaned in toward her, pulled her by the waist against his chest and said in her ear "A great joy of discovery in knowing you, Drala'tem… is how very hard you had to fight how much you wanted me. I have my moments of sharp, distinct desire where I know exactly where I want to touch you and what I wish to see in your eyes. You are not a woman of images but of emotions that leap and churn and fold in on themselves in the dark. So much of you was lost to me the moment you saw the lethality, the resolve you required for your mission. So much of you was lost to me as we walked our seemingly blind but brilliantly lit and dark Path together. We win either way, Drala'tem, if you are found by me, if you remain lost to me. I will claim each moment of my brightly lit dreams of you and you will claim each moment of your undefined and roiling dark. Kiss me. Because you wish to. Because you love me. Because I love you."

She waited for the thoughtless flow of motion but it did not come. She asked breathlessly "Not an order?"

"Not an order. Something else. If you will indulge me. Please, Drala'tem. Please indulge me." He moved his lips to hover near hers, his nose sliding along hers, his voice a vibration along her spine, the breath of his words warming her lips. Apprehension and fear, even the will to tease melted and boiled off as she heard him, felt him, as her heart pounded and pulse sped up and she reflexively felt she should laugh, tease, back away… and that she did not have to do those things anymore. She closed her eyes, brought her hands to the sides of his face and felt the ridged cool to warm curve of his textured frill, moved her lips to his with a soft hitch of lost breath. There was venom, dizziness, tiremit and the spiraling centered avalanche of the ability to say 'yes' and remember the denied and hidden moments where she had wanted to touch him. She had packed those desires behind a reinforced door guarded by the denial she was capable of generating, creating a dark, cramped and foreboding place to approach. Permission to approach and release the warding made that place in her coalesce and expand. It began to spin like a small, dark mass at the center of her. It spit and shuddered, then sputtered into light, a star able to form and burn.

She had thought that?

Or he had thought that?

Or had she thought it and he knew it?

Something neither his nor hers, but as promised, inspiration and execution of their combined wills, creation and discovery and appreciation shared.

Warmth from the internal sun spread, literal heat with the metaphoric, different from Reverie, different from tiremit, his arm around her waist as she lost her balance and leaned in and he caught her, held her, spreading scattering pleasure like sparks along her skin, in her and around her. It was a slowly building, whirling but not disorienting ascent into clarity. Ethereal light and filigreed pleasure that exalted. This wasn't the deepening, darkening, drowning current of sex or drugs, but something new. Communion with every cell of her body blessed. Going nowhere, needing nothing, an inexhaustible continuum. Their kiss was composed of serene timelessness, his hands reverent, accompanied by the measure of the surf, breeze and flutter of fabric.

He ended the trance with the whispered prayer of her name, then his lips moved down her throat and the brilliance of the created sun between them receded until she could become aware of other things.

The moon was gone, the sky was lightening and the sun was rising over the ocean behind her, warmth on her back and rays casting light on his beatific face.

Together they felt like… heaven.

She murmured softly "He Who Ascends To His Throne."

He kissed the space between her collarbones and answered "She Who Rules At His Side."

She laughed and said "Well… that could win every argument ever."

"Then I suggest you do not argue with me."

"Those words… I mean… I understand that sentence but I don't see how it's possible."

"Then it is good that I enjoy arguing with you, Drala'tem."

She tilted her head back, laughed more and then looked at him… at them… and then she noticed…

She was glowing gold along with him, the color swirling and leaping between them where their skin met, looking like sunspots and corona, arcs forming magnetic loops and whorls.


	74. Chapter 74

Senar Tuelon had considered his sacrifice, his Godhood and winning the woman he loved, assured that he would know what to do when it was time to touch her beyond theory, beyond explanation and beyond restraint.

He had never arrived at the expected resolution of power and symbolism, lust and love twined into the expression, the art he desired. Instead each crowding moment of memory surged into a bottleneck of all the things he wanted of her, from her and with her. Each potential moment clamored for satisfaction, from the right to touch her hair to the recurrent and deep need that aligned with the first fantasy of her in Life Support with Pon-Ifa shadows and colors dancing on their skin.

From there the intended circle-to-become-circuit continued to spin out control and smoke at a moment when it should be a transformed halo.

If he thought of his primal fantasy, his thoughts would move to knowing her prohibition regarding tables, then to wishing to respect her prohibition, then to wishing to change it, knowing he could change it, and not wanting to speak to her of it at all. Then he would move to another fantasy, another circle of taken and defined will as paradox.

He dearly wished to change her mind on many things, but he loved her mind as she was and the fear of alteration, of slowly over time changing her opinion because he could…

He knew he could. He could have done it then. He could do it now.

Beyond the already-terrifying truths he had told her, there were all the questions she did not know to ask. The questions he asked himself contradicted themselves and sped with collision, threatening fusion and critical mass when confronted with his very real fear of killing her.

They had spent six hours in one kiss.

He knew if he killed her he would bring her back and begin again.

He had not created a mortal Drell body. He had created a God's body that would be capable of withstanding the fusion of every impulse that threatened to kill her. He did not need to eat, he did not need to sleep, he was near impervious to physical damage while maintaining sufficient sensitivity to feel as he wished to feel with her.

Her body in contrast was mortal, fragile, small, requiring breath he feared he would squeeze from her, a heart he feared he would stop and a mind he could scrub blank or fill with induced pleasure in his timeless trance… and her physical death as he refused to withdraw from the combination of communion and the pleasure feedback he intended to take place.

Then he feared her immortality for the same reasons, that he could be holding a shell that had died as he indulged in his bliss or a shell of a woman who could not die, could not protest, had become a permanent fetish to his obsession.

He loved her, yes, but he was obsessed with her, and that did not change with power over her, it deepened with the sharp edges of what he knew he could do sinking in with new inspiration, new realization.

Had he been curious about her he would perhaps have had more control, but he knew everything he needed to know. He had told her the truth, he was not jealous of Garrus and Cara, though he was aware of each moment she had spent with the man, each Reverie-saturated whisper, each of her reinforcing and exclusive thoughts that bound her closer to her bond mate.

He was not jealous because that was the capacity she had for her life with him. She had intended to give herself completely to him and she had. Her doubts only swam in the dark pool of not being good enough for him. She hadn't demanded to be returned as the original Cara to Garrus, hadn't truly intended to run, bravery, acceptance and surrender as complete as he could want.

He wanted to demonstrate there was no limit to her surrender or his immediately and with every second.

However, his surrender had the barbed edge of knowing nothing he had done while he was alive would have swayed her. Nothing he could have done while Garrus was alive would have swayed her. Regardless of how much she had potentially wanted him, potentially loved him, she would not have broken.

Now he could not only sway her, he could bend and break her and he was not certain that he could resist the force of the related frustrations that would come streaming out along with everything else desiring release, love twined with obsession twined with lust, inextricable.

There was no more mission, no more Garrus, no more distraction, no more resistance from her and he perhaps would not be satisfied until he had her begging, and then he would discover he lacked satisfaction again until she was on her knees.

He had spent too much of his time on his.

Sex would have always been different, distinct, incomparable to the Turian and now it would be even more so with the control he had over her. He knew how to not remind her of Reverie. There were so many shades of bliss that did not match that Turian specialty and he could produce them all.

He would.

There was the shade of competition, the need to prove to her that her life would in fact be better with him in every way. His need to prove it to himself, wondering if instead between them would be her imagining the shade of Irikah superior to her, him knowing every moment she missed Garrus.

The iron restraint that he had exerted was slipping away and he feared its release. To begin slowly with her would be to risk only a thin stream of the intent he bent toward her and how that might lead to suddenly giving way of every desire held in stasis, a crack in the dam of his restraint that inevitably gave way, having held back a deluge that could drown her, drown him, drown them.

He wanted his fantasies, every single one of them. He wanted her pressed by his body down to the table, pressed with his body against a wall.

As a God of Control, his was slipping. He could feel it threaten to dissolve, give way, eat through. He felt it threaten to release the demands of what HE wanted.

What he wanted… right now… would kill her.

This was a woman accustomed to losing consciousness routinely, so that held not as much allure. He would not drive her to pass out, that being one of the hallmarks of Reverie.

He would drive her to be unaware of continuum bliss lasting six hours however, it seemed, as it passed in a blink for her.

He considered other patient paths and they all ended in the same place potentially, with him absolutely unwilling to pull himself physically from her, whatever the position or impulse that was granted freedom first.

The most dangerous path he could conceive would be to give in to the temptation to withdraw from her, until her anxiety and anticipation forced her to express her own attraction. It would be potentially cruel but satisfying to offer her love and service and deny her the lust that had been taken for granted for so long. He could address matters of galactic import as confused sea green eyes blinked and set to that task.

It would appear solicitous and generous but would be none of those things. If he told her he would wait until she came to him, she would immediately assume he no longer desired her, for that was how her mind made sense of her world.

He knew that she wanted him with gratifying cataclysmic fervor that was tempered by the still-lingering prohibition that she had not been able to counter. To allow that to build to where she was the one that turned her eyes to his and took… or begged… he would kill her.

He would forget she needed food, air, sleep, water…

If she incited further loss of control with her potential for giving everything she had…

But this would be the only opportunity to enact that fantasy, unless he made her forget or killed her and brought her back and did it over and over…

He fortunately did recoil at that concept. He did not truly want that to become real. But he did want her to want. There were many moments of contrast beyond their first moments of seeing each other that he could draw up side by side, and they were not equal in measure. They were often like the moment where she had woken him in the middle of the night, informed him softly that his son had been rescued by the bond mate she had never publically claimed, the bond mate that could not claim her, the power of Siha and the casual negligence of her inexplicable inability to see that the man before her needed her, wanted her until the result was pain and retreating below the sand, with her ultimately seeming indifferent to his choice to stay or go as she granted him free will and pointed him toward every exit as preferable to her continued company and burden.

She had urged him to go several times, had tried to rid herself of him as a temptation and as a voluntary slave disguising the ultimate trap he was. She desired his free will and he placed his will in her hands. If she would not speak her will, he would find it, he would serve it, and she would know.

Sickeningly it was not that she was indifferent, but always the sense that he knew best what his own destiny should be and that she believed with unshakable faith that he would be best off without her.

He had a lingering distaste for free will on that basis. Love was not about what one person wanted, this he knew. That was where he had failed Irikah, permitting no mingling of wills, keeping her on her Path and he on his, never choosing shared steps.

In some ways he could not afford to allow Cara to speak, could not allow her to move, had to restrain her as much as he needed to restrain himself. That of course led to leaving her mind and body blank as canvas and painting what he wished.

Garrus had understood immediately – creepy God voyeurism.

The power he had over her had been and is far beyond your suspicions, Garrus. Beyond hers.

Beyond mine.

He could not begin now, not here, not in sand. He would meet her in sand, as he wished, as her Manipar, as her Promised. He could not risk the grit on her delicate and pale skin, a reminder that even light touch if extended too long, too far, was potentially injurious or fatal. Perhaps it was fitting that she considered him at times to be a child playing with God toys, it could permit him to consider her to be a child playing with God devotion, playing with the anger of a Manipar denied by offering again an exit, a will free despite promises made that their combined wills would belong to each other. He would be infuriated if she offered him his freedom yet again in the guise of his own good.

I offered you the prerogatives of a Goddess, but in truth, Drala'tem, I do not wish for you to ask to have that promise fulfilled. I want you weak, I want you small, I want you begging.

At the moment she was staring down at them in wonder, her eyes taking in their light.

He had known her eyes would not see him with gold light any longer… he had created it for her, for himself, because Thane Krios, the man she had first seen, was gone, and so was Shepard. The elements required for recreation of that aura once she had known his original body was gone were absent.

He knew her mind, he knew her synesthesia better than she did, her reasons for it, his analysis of all her calculations. After his death she loved him but had no longer needed him enough to make light blaze anew. Even Garrus's light had kindled at the word "Saren" – it had persisted in them both for logical reasons. Her need and trust had been instant for them both.

She would always need her bond mate, his light would always persist.

The irony of the Crucible was that she had cost Senar his life and Shepard's mission was over. She had dropped at that altar the right to need him any longer. She had seen the exit he had taken, and all that remained had been grief. In her mind she had asked for too much of him and would ask no more. With Shepard gone so was her purpose other than to live for her bond mate. She had held true to that, had asked for nothing for herself, her guilt the deepest rift in her. In many ways she was lost there.

She had embraced Senar's directive at the Crucible as his last wish, inviolate. To no longer be Shepard. To be loved. That it had once been her will had not mattered, it belonged to him now. He had taken it and paid for it with his life.

She did not believe she deserved to be loved by him. In her mind his love must be a fading thing, a remnant of his mortality and his obsession, and she would do as he asked, keep him company, help keep him grounded, connected, provide counsel and balance…

She believed that once his guilt or obsession faded, she would be another forgotten remnant of mortality.

She was willing to be that woman, of course.

But she loved him. That was not in doubt. She loved him, she wanted him, the impassioned experience of her kiss had been true and still held, for her a haunting moment of her failure to control herself. For him yet another Signpost of Rightness.

Her synesthesia had begun in her life as a lightning calculation of what certain circumstances would provide, a manifestation of instinct and potential. It had evolved to where it only activated in life or death criteria, and only for Shepard. It may never activate again, had not even for Kimin, who had become a daughter for whom her love was not in question.

With Shepard gone, her synesthesia would never have that immediacy of mission again, and Cara never wanted anything enough for herself to follow a path in that direction. She had sculpted her own warning system to look for only certain things as vital, and now although new ideas and concepts would still have that echo of vibration and importance, it was very unlikely that a person would activate it. Ironically he would prevent all the circumstances, responsibility or danger that would place her in a position of needing it.

As Shepard, she believed she had asked for too much of those that loved her, had caused too much death, her command had failed in discipline and intent in her last moments, and along with leaving behind the name of Shepard, she had left behind the idea that she could command again, the chaos of her path to the Crucible, extraordinary as that was, to her was a failure.

She had considered Senar's choices as God and thought he was a much better candidate as God, that she would have faltered and failed. She would have let Garrus go, let everyone go, embraced her sacrifice and been of remote, separate service. She likely would have annihilated all Reapers and herself in a moment of epiphany to free herself early on in her tenure as Goddess. No good could come from them or her in that moment, so she believed. The hatred of the combined Protheans in her mind might have demanded it.

She loyally forgot she would have chosen Synthesis because again, she devalued her choices as irrelevant now.

It was her martyrdom that had convinced her to join him here, allowing the symmetry of Garrus free to love Hemorus, but she did not consider herself worthy of love.

She could never tell those she loved that she felt that way.

So the problem was not that he did not know her, it was that he knew her better than she knew herself in some ways, and her grief and martyrdom may never fade, may define her for eternity unless he made her unlike herself. They had discussed fear, a cleaner concept than her grief. He was not yet ready to know how to fill certain voids in her, close certain gaps that had nothing to do with him but were her experience of herself.

He had joined her, carried her through dreams, hoping the smoke and screams would fade.

There were no records of her parents he could use, and he knew that he could not fill the emptiness of their loss with replicas, with anything, but if he had to bring back each recorded Prothean and introduce her to them so their screams faded from her mind, he would do that. Perhaps that was what the depth of her grief required, as he'd said, solving all galactic problems, not only present, but past. The recovery and set course of this cycle, the defeat of her Enemy could not bring back the lost, dead and pained of every other cycle. She bore the deaths and lives of trillions of Protheans, all their memories of what they had touched and comprehended of the previous cycles and their suffering.

When she was asleep she was not under her own control, had no hope of gaining or altering the course of her dreams, so he had watched over her along with the Reverie that gratefully blunted her pain. He, with Garrus in that way, comforted her, guided her through. He did not appear in her dreams as himself, but as the voice that called her away, calmed her, gave her choices she would not grant to herself.

He had learned, as Liara had, that calling her from her own suffering was easy. Calling her from the suffering of another was near impossible.

Abandoning the duplicate Cara to those dreams was something he wished to disclose, to apologize for, but he could not. He had to trust that time and her bond mate would somehow ease that deepened and darkened rift in her that drew her attention in moments she never expressed. That his absence as a pursuer would set them both on their balanced path together and that would be better for them. She would pay the price in some lost equilibrium that he had cherished providing.

Drala'tem, I love you with strength and desperation, weakness and patience.

With that vow, knowing she loved him with her own weakness and desperation, strength and patience, he lifted her and carried her along the beach in the dawn light, her head against his chest and the reminder of her fragility of body cradled in his arms.

He reaffirmed that in fact he wished to keep her fragile, keep her loved, keep her from needing…

But he craved being needed.

This place had been chosen for isolation and beauty. He had built a home for her where sand met sea and then sand merged into a vibrant jungle in deep blues, greens, reflective light and velvet shadows. Here she could be timeless if she chose. She did not know time or location. She did not have an Omni Tool. He would give her all those things if she asked, but he wished for her to experience timelessness after having lived a life that had always been demanding of her time. She need produce nothing, bend toward nothing but her own desires for as long as she wished, this same woman who had allowed herself only eighteen hours between watching him choose at the Crucible and walking back onto the Normandy as Shepard in order to console and provide continuity to those that suffered doubt and pain.

She had apologized to him for picking her name back up after his death, but said it had been necessary for other people.

Always other people, Drala'tem.

He had considered a Drell tent for them, but chose instead a palace, solid walls and polished floors. Tents were temporary but this was permanent for her, no question of being built to last for eternity, set as a gem along the strand in the blues and greens of the landscape as well as the golds and browns that complemented her colors. Their colors.

The area was isolated, food and supplies fabricated, security locked down through orbital means, no approach vector that was unwatched or unguarded. The mass effect relay to this system had been shut down after they had arrived. Guardian Reaper forces bristled in the sky and the surrounding terrain, unseen but seeing.

Her skin was cool from the breeze, her back and breath warm from the sun and from her, her hair tossed from the exposure to surf and his hands. He reaffirmed that he would never harm her. He would be her breath. He would be her sustenance. He would be her bliss.

She was shy in her way in this moment, her thoughts spinning in her internal assertion that he would be happy with her, that she owed him everything she had to give, that she owed him her life, owed him this chance.

Someday, Cara, your thoughts will shift, you will know, that Godhood and every desire granted is your due, not a sacrifice.

Please.

Have mercy.

He could not bear this being her sacrificing herself yet again as he wished to simultaneously exalt her, keep her as she was and express the woman who could so eloquently beg for what she wanted, what she felt he deserved from her.

He was afraid if he spoke he would beg, afraid if he put her down he would fall to his knees.

Please, need me as much as I need you.

Then she realized she was hungry and he was relieved. That he could address. He settled her in his lap on a wide chaise overlooking the sea, close to the surf so she could hear the sound she loved. He fed her fruit with his fingertips.

She smiled at him and his heart squeezed, hammered, the rising tide of vulnerability set to drown him.

She asked "You're scared?"

All the discussion of fear, of assuaging hers, she was inevitably worried for him. "Drala'tem, I am terrified."

"I'm that scary?"

"Beyond."

"Senar… don't be afraid."

"What if I hurt you? To whom do you appeal if I harm you?"

"To whom do you appeal considering you're afraid of me? Here's a pun. You appeal to me."

"That kiss lasted six hours, Drala'tem, I could have remained there forever."

"Yet only six hours. Wasn't that great of a kiss after all? Is this about you hurting Garrus's fist?"

"Partly. I do not wish to harm you through my thoughtless bliss."

"Do you need me to be invincible like you?"

"I do not know. I want too many things at once."

"What do you want?"

"You have never been able to ask me that question and have the answer be something I could truly have. I am not certain I could ask for one thing without it's opposite immediately asserting itself."

"I couldn't ask you that question until now. Times change."

"But perhaps I do not."

"Perhaps… I don't want you to change. You know I love you. Don't you?"

"And if I harm you?"

"You'll just… bring me back, right? We were going to make mistakes together, one of them might be cardiac arrest?"

"I do not wish for you to die."

"You got a dungeon here?"

"Do I what?"

"Have a dungeon installed underneath these sapphire floors and streaming gold light. Somewhere dark and dank, just one cell, two chains on the wall, flickering torches, that sort of thing?"

"No. I did not consider that a requirement. Do you believe I need one? Or are you asking for yourself?"

She laughed and said "I would make a terrible dominatrix."

"The back of my neck and a particular spot on my throat, as well as my own oft denied will know that to be untrue."

"Oh, well, that was… business. Aren't we supposed to be talking pleasure?"

"You were the one to say dungeon."

"Okay. Is this my first time here or have you killed me a bunch of times already and you're this nervous because you're hoping you don't do it again? Or is this just a 'let's get on with it' anticipation of watching me die again?"

"This is your first time here, Drala'tem."

"You know that part where I think you're a delinquent child?"

"Of course."

"Wanna be one right now?"

"What?"

"Problems have solutions, silly. Set a sub-routine to be aware of my heart rate, hydration, respiratory function and blood sugar. Set alarms for parameters and time limits. If you do kill me, it's because I was blasphemous and called a God a delinquent silly child and provoked him with the idea of a dungeon."

"Not A God. YOUR God."

"My God. Who appeals to me."

"And if I want you weak, I want you willing, I want you vulnerable?"

"Then you're in luck. Do you think I came here because I thought we would politely play Pon-Ifa for eternity?"

"Do you think that if you asked that of me, that I would not grant it?"

"You would. But you could have visited and done that. You've gone to a lot of trouble otherwise for the required privacy. If we talked galactic politics and played Pon-Ifa exclusively you would be… a deeply frustrated God. "

"I am that now."

"And can you imagine that for a moment I would not know that? I used you. We have issues. I'm angry. You're angry. And I want you until it hurts. I could never show that it hurt."

"I lied to you. I violated your trust. I stole your privacy. I showed that it hurt constantly."

"I forced you to undergo surgery. I endangered your life routinely. I endangered your son's life critically. I forced you to escort me to your own death."

"I did choose God and not civil servant, Cara. I chose lightning bolts and not press releases."

"And I'm here."

"And you believe you deserve torture and death at my hands?"

"Don't I? From someone's hands anyway. Yours more than anyone's. I don't deserve it any less than I did when Yased nearly died. You deserved so much better from me… Everyone… deserved so much better than me. I had that information in my head for years… years. The answer was there and I cost how many lives? How many Geth taken and then turned against each other? How could I have failed Sooth more completely? How could I have failed you more completely than the loss of your life? Kill me a few thousand times… for a few millennia… make it really hurt. One day don't bring me back because you're tired of hearing me scream and apologize and beg for… whatever. You've earned it. I've earned it. I'm here to ask you what you want, finally. I don't know the real answer, neither do you. I love you. I hate you. I want to be here more than anything. I want to run away. I want to die right now. I want to live forever. I want my mind blank so you can't read it. I want to think every thought thinkable."

She immediately thought that thinkable maybe wasn't a word and she began reviewing her previous sentences for lack of sense, found them to all qualify. She was about to cry.

His lips curved with adoration and the shifting of an idea, concepts in momentary alignment that he could freeze and examine. He could set trillions of selves to focusing on that dichotomy until one of them granted him the perfect answer, but he wished to honor her inspiration and set that circuit glowing. Every counted memory that had been catalogued and examined disappeared and there was only her, right now, and the inspiration sufficient to this moment.

He did not need to do anything except exactly what he wished to do right now. Right now the sun on the curve of her throat contrasted with the shadow on the other side and that point of exploration of temperature and texture was all he wanted in the next moments, then each moment after would dictate his desire.

He moved her until she was facing him again, knees to either side of his thighs as she had been in the sand, his mouth along sun-warmed and shade-cooled skin, her mind spinning on provocations and rights, the background communion with her, the rising sun and arch of her trembling throat under his tongue. He said "I'll tell you what I want. It is what I have always wanted. I don't want you powerless forever. I want you powerless now. Wield your power, your words, later, and I will strip them from you again. I made this dress for you, but I want it off now. Take it off. Look at me. I want your eyes on me. Not always, you can draw your eyes to other things and I can draw them back to me when I wish."

She hated him. She loved him. She wanted to die. She wanted to live forever. She drew the dress off and shivered, the surface of her skin colder, gooseflesh and hard nipples and a flood of unwanted freight of desire from her. She still did not know if she would die and was in her own way relieved to have it started, have her fears validated, that he would make her suffer. It felt inevitable to her, like gravity and letting go. Like the moment of the drugs flooding her veins over Alchera after she had accepted her own death. Like not being able to run to her death when she wished to.

She was beautiful but he did not say so, washed over with her sense of Rightness that would perhaps not come with pleasure for a while or perhaps ever, this response closer to who she was past all of her lies or intellect.

She would be afraid of this and want this or she would not be Seen.

He gathered her hands behind her back and pulled down, her breasts lifting and his mouth closing on a chilled and hard nipple, warming under his tongue and tightening further under his teeth. There he stayed, the sensation of biotics that were now gold in expression shimmering through his skin, his mouth, her hips writhing and her moan in a stuttered dragged release through her tight throat.

The rush of satisfaction had nothing to do with being a God and everything to do with being the man who had imagined that moan and the feel of her under his tongue. She was bent taut as a bow, his hand around her wrists feeling the twist of her, surrender and fear, pleasure and resistance in her mind, his other hand moving to stress the skin of her nipple exactly to the point of a tiny burst of pain and then released, soothed, did the same with his tongue and his teeth on the other.

The rush of everything anticipated and feared and desired arrived in its inspiration, his mouth to her ear and his hand to between her thighs, her simultaneous wet welcome and resistance, his thumb along her clit as he told her "So if you are a perfect masochist, Cara, you know what you deserve is pain and neglect. Part of you wants that, agreed to this because you deserve ugly deaths at my hands."

He did not require an answer, panicked assent and hoping that was not true of her, but knowing it was true along with the thin stinging wash that he could feel what she felt, hear what she heard in her inner voice, the stab of cold as welcome as the tightening of her nipples had been, as welcome as the rhythmic clench of her as counterpoint.

He built the pleasure and pain in her, thin and contradictory layers on top of each other, blurring and sharp and warm.

He released her hands, keeping one by the wrist and drawing it around to splay against the leather binding his cock painfully, guiding her hand to release him, to stroke fitfully and with tighter whimpers in the back of her throat, his mouth at her throat, at her breasts, bringing her to the point of near orgasm and then stopping with her gulps of breath drawn in gasps, her hand tightening around him. Her veins were venom-filled and his skin was flaring with glow and biotics, his fingers paused for the suspended moment where his mouth returned to her ear and said "If I am a perfect sadist, Drala'tem, why would I permit you any pain at all? If you wished to die, I must grant you eternal life. If you must suffer, suffer with that."

She laughed and choked out "But you are… hurting me…"

"Then I am not a perfect sadist, Cara, and you should be afraid every moment of that."

They hated each other. They loved each other. It was painful for them. It was glorious.

Then he was a God and a man, and she was a small and fragile woman and it was wrong and perfect. He seized her hips in both hands, surged inside her, his biotics flaring on her clit, inside her, on her mouth, on her breasts, along her back as his hands scratched along her skin, as she screamed and Miracles were born.

He did not have to change anything about her, he was with her, entwined. He knew the answers. "You're mine, Drala'tem. You are never leaving my side."

"Never."

"You will live until the day that I decide that you may die."

"Yes."

"I am yours, Drala'tem. I am never leaving your side."

She was crying, bliss and grief and salt on his tongue as he told her "I will never die, and I will always need you."


	75. Chapter 75

Russ was nervous.

He'd been gloating, teasing, an irresistible biotic shockwave of insistence…

What he really was… now… involved being critically and unconditionally nervous, more than he had been as a still-too-tall fledgling considering how to act around girls when his real problems had been how to act around boys and why he was having that headache.

He'd known how to act around Garrus and now…

He didn't know.

Or he didn't have to act.

Or did he?

He'd realized he did need to be away from the farmhouse for a little while because he required time to figure out… everything. Plus the look on Cara's face about the table thing. He'd thought a bit further on it and realized that Cara was probably picturing Kimin barging in and that had changed his mind.

He was experiencing batches of blue flare that rose up on his spine and the tips of his fingers. He kept muttering 'sorry' to nobody as they happened.

They would… live at the farmhouse, but…

But.

Oh Spirits, but.

He reflected on his initial ebullient insistence, which he still didn't regret, but now he wanted to apologize for the pity clone thing. Maybe that comment had been a little too honest in too many ways to mention it or take back.

Senar had been able to sacrifice himself because everyone else would let him do it the way he arranged it.

In some ways Russ would have been alone for an immortal lifetime because everyone else would let him do it, but those people had unanimously chosen a different way… because he had been so often the loyal, clueless…

It had been done for love, not pity, but there was a morass of guilt, of knowing relative priorities, knowing his place in any pecking order, the same way Senar had known his, known it so completely that the Crucible had made inevitable sense and they had all fallen like fated dominoes.

Being able to be with Garrus 2.0 involved the permission of his Avah and miraculous intervention of a God. It had been a matchmaking gift, something dropped in Russ's lap that he would never let go. The comment had been about pitying Russ but maybe now it sounded like the clone was pitiful and…

And it was clearly his knowledge of the pecking order, everyone else rushing into the silence he wouldn't allow to back him up for the one moment he needed.

He closed his eyes and sighed.

Maybe he couldn't be the same guy that acted a certain way at all because this changed a man more than the end of Reapers. Not just the right to be with Garrus, the knowledge that four people had aligned again toward a conclusion not possible alone, fallen like dominoes.

Senar had sacrificed himself, then they had all sacrificed unique personhood for Russ. Yeah, theoretically other people benefited, but not as much. Senar had known well enough to have Cara watch their faces, have Cara see the inevitable bloom of blue and need in Russ.

As though she would say no after that. It would have been impossible. Senar asking for himself… would not have been as effective.

Ambush.

On the scale of 'shit that's going to change a man' these facts qualified. Now there was no pecking order, there were three matched and mated pairs that were otherwise impossible. Russ never had to experience himself outside those intimate circles of devotion again.

Spirits, don't let me be a complete and babbling fool. I've managed 'babbling' already but I might escape 'complete' if I don't trip over my tongue too many times or be unable to look at the guy. Or if I can't stop looking at him.

So now he was waiting. Still on Sanctuary, Senar had taken Cara and Garrus into a Reaper to finish his science projects. Two weeks ago. Russ was now waiting in one of several Turian-friendly suites appended to the "Boomstick" – the affectionate name of the complex for weapons testing. A place where Russ and Garrus spent a lot of time together. Seemed fitting.

More fitting than awkwardly meeting around the farmhouse table, everyone staring at each other and asking "So… how are you?"

His answer? "I'm unpredictably blue and otherwise having no idea except 'do not pounce on the man at first sight.'"

There had been no questions about supervision of Senar because… really… what would they be supervising exactly? It all required iron trust after what they'd accomplished together had included mistrust and mutiny in turns. Russ understood the math. An extra Cara meant Garrus no longer worried about Senar stealing, fascinating or monopolizing her one way or the other. Senar already had a 'her.' An extra Garrus meant…

That Russ had yelled really loud.

What had he learned? That dreams come true if you're either really, really patient or really, really loud. Maybe both. He needed some of that patience now, but the insides of his head and body were too loud. He'd been patient because he'd known there was absolutely no way and that had been a solid place to be. Now that place was boiling over and unstable. Russ had made a good start at pacing a hole in the floor covering and –

And there was a knock at the door. Was it locked? He'd left it unlocked. It didn't lock automatically, he knew. He'd assumed Garrus… would walk in and…

And he was frozen. The knock happened again and Russ rushed to the door, wondering if it would be Senar, something went wrong, something, someone changed their mind, they couldn't go through with it…

He felt coldly stable and even comfortable in that 'absolutely no way' place, considering reversion to that mental space for a vertiginous moment, but he did answer the door, prepared to face whatever was there.

It was… Garrus… alone. He stared, wondering still if… he was here to tell him that there had been a change in plans.

Garrus tilted his head and said "You okay?"

Russ was frozen in expectation of breaking news, breaking hearts as he said carefully "I'm okay. Door was open. You knocked, didn't come in… I guess I'm… expecting formal bad news."

"My arrival's bad news?"

"Is it?"

Garrus took a deep breath and then let it out and said "Not from my point of view. Maybe we should have worked out hand signals or I could have worn a nametag. 'I'm a Duplicate, Ask Me How!' And then I could say I really have no idea, but still. Might have helped with anxiety."

Russ's throat went dry and he stared. Garrus smiled. The sense of stun persisted until Garrus said "Changed your mind?"

Russ started and said "What? No. I just… don't quite believe it."

"Door? Open? Inside? Or do you want to come out and take a walk?"

"I have… absolutely no idea what I want." That is such a lie. He wanted to tackle him.

"Okay." Garrus moved in past him and took the door, closed it gently. "Chair. Find one." Garrus steered him to a chair and Russ sat down heavily.

Garrus asked "You're a wreck?"

Russ nodded numbly.

"Thought you might be."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Good guess. I wanted to say that I'm sorry about that whole… pity clone thing… I…"

"You look pretty pitiful to me, seems fitting."

Russ laughed and said "Yeah. I… we didn't get much of a chance to talk."

"No, not about this. Seemed weird since… we'd get a chance now."

"Seemed weird. Yeah."

"Not… that us being together is weird."

"From my point of view…"

"Well, I think you're looking for the word impossible, not weird."

Russ asked "Do you want to talk about it? Them? I mean, there's another you and your chosen bond mate with another him and…"

"We can talk about it, sure. Weird and impossible, now possible. Funny feeling, thinking that I didn't know who I would wake up as… and I guess he's feeling the same way. I'm different. I had… I asked Senar to remove the bonding chemistry from me, well, him… Okay, give me a few weeks to get pronouns and tenses right… so I'm… not the same."

"You what?" Seemed impossible, but there it was, more shock.

"Turned out he could do it. We can bond. Are you having second thoughts? I should ask."

"What? No. NO. I… didn't… think that was possible or that you'd…"

"That I'd what? You know what? Never mind. Don't answer that. Breathe instead. Breathe for a minute. Breathe for a few minutes. If I'm right you're trying really hard not to flare. You don't have to, you can flare away. It's just me."

"I'll try breathing but I'm not sure if I can stop flaring with you in the room."

"Kinky. I'm not leaving, so you'll just have to figure it out."

"I can't believe you're here."

"I can't believe I'm two weeks old."

Russ laughed, sat back, lightheaded, did set off a voluntary flare to clear his nerves, which didn't help because the additional charge of the last two weeks plus the added possibility of 'bond' crawled right back up his spine with redoubled intensity. He did breathe. Then he said "I think giving oxygen to the biotics is a mistake." Garrus laughed and Russ realized – "What the hell do I call you?"

"Pity clone isn't going to catch on?"

"Said I was sorry."

"Don't be, it was convincing. You haven't thought about it?"

"It's going to be YOUR name."

"Yeah, but you'll be using it. You really haven't… thought of anything? I find that hard to believe."

"I did, but…"

"Spill."

"Might not surprise you to believe… that I've imagined you. Um. Often."

What's-His-Name? stared at him as though to point out the blatantly obvious and said "I imagined you slept with Vakarians so you could… imagine."

"And I'm still only sleeping with THE Vakarian."

"Who was a Fanning a few weeks ago. Okay, continue. So this imagination of yours?"

"I always called you Ahr. Always. I will, I know. Ahr. That's your name. The only one that's mattered to me anyway."

"So call me that."

"I was thinking maybe I'd build up to the ridiculously possessive, maybe wait on the confession of the reality that I've done it since I was 15."

"It's not ridiculous. I wasn't thinking that we'd date other people. We… did this… to spend time together. Not just you. I made a choice too, just couldn't talk about it until now because we knew… we'd be separate. Senar and Cara did the same thing. They didn't talk about it, they just made the choice. Now we've done it. You want to call me Ahr… do it. Yeah, maybe in public it's… hey. Call me Ahr. Short for Ahrem. That could be my new name. What does that mean again? My mom would kill me if I forgot the meanings of all the Names. Don't tell her."

Ahrem. Turian warrior, thousands of years ago… popular name because he had united his Clan with four others. Alliances were not easy then. Not like they were easy now. Russ said hollowly "Doesn't it mean 'Uniter Without Blood' or something?"

"I'm technically more of a divider with blood in punctured holes."

Russ said "Ahrem. Okay. Ahr." His heart skipped. It felt like his biotics were going to envelop and then stop his heart. Oh well, die happy. Just not die happiest. Hold on a little while longer, please. Right. Won't die. I'll be back in two weeks apologizing again, maybe with a nametag.

Ahrem looked at him, saw Russ clutching the armrests and he continued to talk calmly "My last job is obsolete because, you know, Reaper God has control of the Citadel. Not only am I unemployed, but redundant. I'm not complaining. The economy has collapsed in the best way. Don't need a job, don't need money, I can do what I want because everything else will get done without me. I know they'll be happy. All of them. Us too. If you need to know something, know this part. I was a bonded Turian. Still knew I wanted you. Always knew I couldn't do without you. Now I'm not bonded. Now I can bond to you. I'm not going to change my mind. I'm not here because I have to be. I'm here because I want to be."

"Was Cara ever jealous? Was it a problem?"

"No. Never. I guess it'd be easy to think she'd be anxious about it privately, but she wasn't. She insisted we spend time together. She knew… I needed you. She was much more gracious about… outside influence… than I ever was. She never said or acted like she was jealous. I think she felt guilty for keeping us apart, really."

"I'd feel a little better if she was a bitch about it, what with how I treated her and Senar."

"Yeah. Me too. But she didn't. I took it for granted, really. I think she knew I would be… obstinate. As obstinate as she ever was about Senar. You've seen her since the Crucible. She won't talk about being Shepard, she talks about the future. If she has a mission now it is to see people happy, and this could do it. She's guilty about Senar, she's guilty about… she's living for other people right now. I think the beacon… the Crucible… I think they fucked her up in ways she can't express. She won't talk about it. Maybe someday Senar helps her with that. Maybe the other Garrus can now that this has happened. So on all of this, we wait. She's talking about immortality, so it seems she plans to stick around."

"You guys haven't done the immortality thing?"

"She hasn't. He hasn't. I have. I knew you did, so I asked Senar to give me the same deal. Whatever it was you had. Didn't ask. Seemed poetic for a leap of faith. Knew you'd catch me."

"I look at you… and I can't believe… that I can tell you that I love you."

"You've been doing it every day since you were 15, right? You can say it out loud and I can hear you now. I love you."

A deep breath and the biotic surge again, and then he remembered "Looking at you. Right. I…" He stood up with a deep breath and pulled a case from an obscure drawer. "Cara asked me how we'd be able to tell you apart… I had an idea. Turns out Senar… I asked him if there was anything in Vakarian blue, he didn't know of anything matching the description, but he was able to make it." Inside were hand-knapped hoops of deep Vakarian blue stone that looked like volcanic glass. They weren't that fragile, but they were that sharp. Russ had spent weeks learning the technique, making them. His hands were torn up, but the hoops looked good, barbaric and catching the light on the edges, the irregular chipped grooves and the rich depths.

Ahrem… Ahr… at the thought of the new name, Russ's heart squeezed hard and painfully. Blue flared from his fingertips and leaped to Ahr's as Ahr touched a hoop with a talon tip. There were twelve of them, each about two inches in diameter, quarter of an inch of flaked stone making up the hoop with a bridging thin bar at the top to connect through plate. Russ said "I thought…" He stroked a fingertip along Ahr's mandible, then one along the outermost fringe spike. "If you wore these… no potential for mistaken identity."

Ahr's talon tip moved to the web of thin gashes along the visible side of Russ's palm. "Did you get those cuts making these?"

"Yeah. I didn't want to use Medigel. Kinda hoping they'll scar over."

Ahr said steadily "Put them on me, then I want a look at your hands."

Russ couldn't afford to have his hands shake, placement careful and measured, three along each side of his mandible, three along each fringe spike, Ahr holding still for the thin tool that punched a hole for each securing bar, except for Ahr's hand moving to Russ's bent waist, talons sharp through clothing. Russ said shakily "Precision work here, that's distracting."

Ahr's talons flexed and he said warmly "I have faith in you. Or I can tell the story of why they're crooked and why you couldn't think in a straight line."

"Not to Kimin."

"Not yet anyway. Few years. I won't forget by then."

Russ moved to the other side, Ahr's other hand moving to his waist again, but Ahr faced forward, didn't move, the concentration and focus bleeding some of the tension from Russ.

That's his name. That's how he'll look. He'd be here… in a few years…

Somehow he's okay and he wants to be here.

Somehow she's okay… or she's not… but she will be or maybe is now, and either way she wants us to be here…

I didn't steal him, I didn't hurt them…

He was given, a miracle of three other people's efforts and generosity. And love.

He's really here.

Ahr.

Mine.

His.

Russ's hands started to shake after securing the last hoop through the plate, permanent and even. The box had been set aside and his hands were empty except for the cross-hatching slashes in his hide and the biotics that crackled there. Ahr wanted to see his hands. That's all he could remember. Russ stepped in front of him, fell to his knees and offered his hands into Ahr's lap, looked up into his new face, eyes matching the paint, paint matching the new adornments that glinted and swung and settled as Ahr looked at him, still and always the most beautiful man he had ever seen, would ever see.

Ahr dropped his gaze to Russ's hands, traced a light talon along the deepest carved line in his hide, lifted that hand to his mouth and licked along the stinging line, dragging a tooth along it to draw fresh blood. Subharmonics trilled in their throats, Russ's eyes closed over the sound of his own moan, then opened to watch the surreal moment. Ahr smelled different, the way he had years ago, unbonded, no Cara in him or of him, no doubt, no hesitation, hardly any time between deciding he wanted Russ for his own and having that be real.

For Russ it would take a little longer, that years-long obsession rising and flaring, as much of a part of him as biotics, as his blood, twitching in his tongue as he imagined Ahr's blood.

His teeth ground together as he closed his eyes. Thinking stopped. There was the feeling Ahr's tongue and teeth on his hands, as he heard Ahr's husky laugh, felt uncontrolled biotics, released blood and supplication. All his shyness and anxiety melted, replaced by rising heat and hunger, starting in his spine, moving through his body as he sat panting, opening his eyes to watch again, the surreal sense fading as well, replaced by Right. This was Right. This was his Right.

Ahr bit along the rise of hide where his palm met his wrist, lifting his head to look at Russ with a possessive hitch to his smile that framed his tongue with Russ's blood on it, licking at his hand.

The years were gone, the wait was gone and all that was left was Ahr. This man had held his last thought before he slept, he had been intimate and integral to every dream, his first thought when he woke.

If he was a fool, it was for this man, and Right now… that was good. He dragged his Ahr from the chair into his lap, growled "Get our clothes off, use your talons. Now." He had something to do himself, his mandible rubbing along the scent ridge that would be his, teeth along Ahr's throat, sinking in points until blood flowed, feeling Ahr's hands and talons pull cloth off them in shreds, making the choice now. Right now. This man. Mine. Plates spread and Reverie washed through him, his body and voice built to full growl, the need for the demanded other half of Right. He licked at Ahr's throat until clothing was gone, plates spread and thighs flexing, shifting to move Ahr's body. Russ bared his throat and wrenched Ahr's head down with his fingers between his fringe, hoop edges and teeth cutting grooves, blue trailing and flaring on his hide.

He thought he'd have to say something, demand to bond, now, but the sounds from his Ahr's throat and his own said everything he needed to know. Right now. Right. Now. It was happening, that choice, that decision, in their hands and on their tongues and in the throats that were so much alike. Russ's hands closed around his Ahr's cock with a newly bleeding hand, groaning at the rush and shift of lightheaded Reverie. He lifted Ahr by his hip spur, Ahr's teeth digging into his throat and tongue along the blood lines, Russ's cock finding his bond mate, sharper and sudden new Reverie with the change, with the choice, immediately. Russ's biotics surged in the sound and shape of stasis, how he'd kept this man alive at the Crucible, how he'd covered him in battle so many times, now his. Always his. Ahr's chest and waist was held to his where they touched in stasis, the blue burning palm of Russ's hand pressed tight enough to Ahr's fringe to cut in deep. Russ's cock surged, twisted and sought his long-denied but never-again-denied bond mate, his head turning to catch sight of the gleaming of hoops, the wet trails of blue. Ahr's tongue and mouth moving on Russ's throat, his talons scratching along lines of Russ's waist and with a deep keen of need Russ interlocked their mandibles, his mouth as close to Ahr's ear as he could get, so he could hear and feel the pace of his breathing, the rumble and flow of subharmonics, the grip of biotics that would claim him, hold him, keep him.

Mine.

Right.

Now.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Cara woke up in bed with Garrus. Senar had delivered them back to their farmhouse to wake together. Kimin was out with Kerplunk with… another Senar.

Knowing there were potentially trillions of platforms with at least some Senar in them somewhere was one thing, but it was jarring in a new way to see him without his glow. There was a symbolic and realistic withdrawal of him from her life. After the choice of duplication he had retreated in ways that were odd and painful and soothing. He'd be there, but he had promised he wouldn't be a source of pain or mystery with the words "Lasam, I will always be there when you call, often be there because I wish to visit, to talk, to see this new place that is in some ways also my new home, the people and the progress. If you need me for any reason, if any pain troubles you, even if you do not know the solution, call upon me. I will find a way. Thank you for your gift. Everything I have to give, Lasam, in my open palm, is for you, and always will be. Never doubt that you are loved."

Russ would be there, but he wouldn't be a source of pain.

She wouldn't have to miss them, she had her button to her God and Russ would be living here after he and… the other Garrus found their way to not… breaking the kitchen table in broad daylight.

So…

That was good.

This was good.

These were all good things and she did relax, somehow the complications added up to something simpler, something streamlined. This Garrus… was entirely hers, no lost opportunity to mourn. She… was entirely his in the same way.

No emergency rising to keep them apart. No more surprises from Senar. They wouldn't lose Russ to exhaustion or despair.

Garrus woke soon after, at least part way, his arms reaching out to her and pulling her closer. With her secured he whispered that he loved her, nuzzled at her throat and fell back asleep. No starting awake or regret that he was the one that remained with her, not the one given to Russ. Mindlessly reassuring in ways words couldn't be. Her hand stroked along the hide of his throat, tracing around the plates that dappled his hide in small disks. She imagined them like stepping stones in water, her fingers swirling around them, some magic spell cast by familiar movement and recognition through fingertips. He felt exactly the same to her, she felt exactly the same to herself except for the cataclysmic change in her internal landscape, some land masses split and some merged, new continents and new exploration, some treacherous passages closed. She sank into a new contentment, some strains and pressures, even some guilt relieved.

She watched the sunlight through windows, taking in the odd blend of ancient furniture with modern upgrades, a weapons work bench, and it was perfect in its clashing improbability.

Home.

Really home, some sense of being potentially pried out of place relaxing. She could stop wondering how Senar was in her head. He would now be in… the other her's head… and what remained was an open palm and unconditional love and innovation in her service.

She could maybe let many things go that she'd held tight enough to leave deep impressions and pain.

She could stop wondering if Russ went grief-gripped to bed each night, a varren his only potential company.

She drifted back to sleep, allowing no worries, no anxieties, counting her blessings instead of her curses deliberately.

She woke up later to Garrus's insistent voice at her ear "Hey. Hi. Thought I'd run some diagnostics."

She grinned and said "Back to work, huh? One of your toys?"

He shook his head and tugged on her earlobe with his teeth, whispering "You're not a toy."

"I also don't have diagnostic routines to run. What are you looking for?"

"I could run some routines. Check responses, that sort of thing."

"Routine? Is that a good thing? We're routine?"

"That is the best thing. I'm so glad I'm me."

"I'm so glad I'm me too."

He rolled over with his speed and grace, and she was pinned beneath him, perfectly happy to be there, to see his smile, see his eyes. He rubbed noses with her and then touched his crest to her forehead. He kissed her, the pealing bliss of Reverie starting to hum, harmonizing with her sense of home.

She agreed. Routine was excellent.

His mouth traveled over her throat, her fingers along his fringe as he said "I'm declaring irresponsibility. We're really going to do it. Stay in bed all day. We've got to work on that irresponsibility thing. It's the only aspect of our lives that we haven't really nailed down."

"That's not routine."

"So we live some contradictions. We're both okay with that. Have to establish a pattern of irresponsibility somewhere."

She agreed with a moan.

He said "I've been thinking, if this all worked out, and it seems it did, at least for me… about that immortality thing, promise me you'll be irresponsible with me. Let's take two more weeks out of our lives and earn the rest of it together. I want to stick around, see what happens, keep on running diagnostics. What do you say?"

She agreed with another moan.


	76. Chapter 76

Cara and Garrus – A year after Sanctuary was founded

Over dinner, Cara told Garrus "Senar's challenged me to figure out the genetic variant on the carrot cake tree, he says it's very close to the red velvet… but that's probably because of the cream cheese frosting. He's done it with miniscule changes to the code. It's beautiful. If I figure it out I might be able to score some baklava topiary near the house and that would be wonderful. He knows he has me fascinated and I'm sure he's amused by the fact that if I figure it out I literally get a cookie."

Garrus said "Then you figure out how to cure a disease or make a crop more resistant."

"Yeah, that's good too!"

A knock on the door and there was Tali, Senar and…

Sooth.

She looked like Sooth.

Cara's mouth went dry and she stared. Garrus came to stand behind her, his hands steadying her, on her shoulders. He said quietly "Come on in."

Cara started and said "Right. Please. Come on in."

Tali and Senar looked serious, not joyous, and there was no recognition in Sooth that Cara could see, none of the delicate body posture or hesitant shyness of plating.

Ushered into the living room, everyone sat and Cara remained dry mouthed, Garrus holding her hand. Senar said "After the relay opened to the location of the construction of the Crucible, Tali'Zorah and I began searching. We were able to establish contact with Consensus Geth. All Geth platforms that had been affected by Reaper code are being converted back to the Consensus. We were able to locate Sooth's platform. Her power source had been drained, her connection port destroyed. Still at the insertion point, the node she had chosen."

She still had the N7 armor on her shoulder, still had the hole.

Tali continued "I had backups, as much as Sooth could store, but I did not have access to Geth storage methods and the restoration is incomplete. There is a lot she can't access. She has reclaimed and reviewed a great deal of what I had, but she does not remember much of her time on the Normandy and may not be able to recover it. EDI has given us her surveillance, Sooth has reviewed it. We all thought she would like to meet you."

Cara said quietly "What should I call you?"

"We have had it restored that we chose the name Sooth."

"Do you want to keep that? When I knew you, you called me Shepard Commander, but I don't go by that name any longer. Now I'm Cara Fanning."

"Creator Tali'Zorah did tell us that. We are integrating much of what was lost."

Senar said "She deleted all information referring to you because she did not wish to be a source of information for Reaper forces."

Cara started to cry and said "Well… that's old news anyway. You saved us all, Sooth. What I want to ask now is… who do you want to be today?"

"We do not know."

"Will you stay and find out? I miss you. You're family if you want to be."

"We do not know what we want to be."

"This is a great place to figure that out."

Tali said "It is possible her memories are encrypted and only inaccessible for now."

Cara said "Doesn't matter. We'll make new ones."

Garrus said "Tomorrow we're taking a walk. The virce are digging up the Linzer tarts."

Cara grinned "So we're going to plant more, hope they nest close. Maybe we can make a few elusive friends."

Sooth said "We know nothing about virce."

Garrus said "We don't either. That's the fun part."

Cara said "Sooth, what you've lost… all that matters to me is that you have something to gain and that I might be there for it. You'll always have a home here."

Garrus said "Tali and Senar can help us put in a Geth recharge and uplink station. Whatever you need."

And there it was, at least something familiar, the eloquent and awkward grace that shouldn't fit into that shape as Sooth turned her head and asked Tali tentatively "Would you stay with us?"

Tali said "Yes, I have a room here, would you like to stay with me? We can fit in the station easily."

"Yes."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Drala'tem and Senar – Two years since duplication

She still had no idea what time it was, what day it was, and it didn't matter. Concepts without reference to other concepts slipped out of all context. She found no reason to leave where he'd brought her, no need to ask after the other her or Garrus, her commitment to 'here and now and him' her focus.

She did not think he was headed toward galactic domination.

Except that he was definitely headed toward galactic domination…

It was complicated.

She did not always agree with him.

Okay, she disagreed with him a lot.

She found she enjoyed disagreeing with him a lot.

Remaining mortal had a few snags in the beginning, but as she had suggested, monitoring of her vital indicators worked as a practice. He knew before she was hungry that she was hungry, knew before she was tired that she was tired. Rather than ever pushing her beyond those points due to expression of his own desires he insisted on their primacy. He relied upon those as the honored indicators and that satisfied his need to know, need to control, need to fulfill what she wanted before she knew she wanted it.

She appreciated the fact that the duplicate Cara might have been shockingly, stunningly jealous of her or might not have been, and she had come to the conclusion that divergent paths deserved privacy and some level of personal smug at having both won equivalently incalculable lotteries in terms of mates.

This was a place for communion and that's what happened. Communion also included a lot of discussion. Debate.

Argument.

Much of the policy of the new God was up for formulation and debate and she was lucky enough to be an advisor. Currently they were under the moon and she was on his lap. He could experience constant communion with her, but they had discovered that her capacity was not the same as his. He was concerned about altering her in any significant way to make her more like him, and she was concerned for the same thing. There they agreed. She was altered, but in ways he suggested to ensure she was not prone to disease, pain or dysfunction. Immortal in the sense that every moment of her existence was archived and backed up and if she suddenly… spontaneously combusted… she'd be back in two weeks in the same spot and they could carry on as they had been.

There was a lot of carrying on.

Full communion did what happened on the beach at the six hour kiss – wonderful. She achieved Nirvana but formed no memories of it in relationship to time. It cleared her mind, allowed her the tabula rasa sense of being derailed from negative potential, swept clear of residual thought, able to begin again mindfully. Brainwashing in a procedural sense. Light and communion allowed for clearer channels of thought and she embraced that as a positive change, not a forced change, which concerned him… and her.

He remained in full communion, able to grant it to her in different versions and flavors and they were all good things. He was able to introduce into her mind his own thoughts, his own generated sensations, thoughts and feelings. He was able to share those, just not at God speed or intensity or it did in fact wipe her out and she had trouble getting back to herself.

They learned integration of her thought process and despite capability of sharing thoughts, they maintained speech where he did not finish or start her sentences for her, or not all the time. They both insisted on at least occasional speech for their own reasons. Speech required picking a direction and traveling there intellectually. Internal thought was much more amorphous and multidirectional, overwhelming quickly in paths she could not follow if she was exposed to his thought, and even her own thought had always been more like a particle collider, moving too fast and then splattered against a wall for analysis of the original intent. Speech focused on one thing. Everything at once was for time spent without words.

He learned the mechanics of control over her and learned how he could introduce thought, emotion and directives with a particular emotional 'tag' to it so she knew it was from him and she could maintain her own choices. He might be able to follow trillions of lines of action and thought and formulation, but they both wished for her to maintain a mortal viewpoint and sensitivity to the needs and limitations of mortality. If one God could fall to insanity on the basis of unchallenged power, two Gods could do that easily by engaging in power struggle and not the intended circuit.

Moving on to the greater plans as his power expanded and his influence grew was the most common source of argument, debate and contrast of viewpoint.

Much of the earlier phases of recovery after the Crucible had been dictated by the circumstances of where he was and what he saw. Stopping the fighting had been the first concern. Aiding the wounded had been the second. Feeding the hungry the third. Curing the sick the fourth.

Those would always be resurgent needs. There would still always be fighting. There would still always be wounded. There would still always be those that were hungry and those that were sick.

Reapers could not stop fire, flood, volcano, natural disasters, loss of containment, collision, vacuum. There were always relief efforts and rebuilding and construction.

The more his influence spread, the more control he had, the more potential abuse of that control was possible. She formulated her objections and concerns without interference from him.

Well, without constant interference.

He interfered a lot.

Communion was distracting, sex was distracting, meeting him in her dreams was…

Look, she wasn't really saying she minded being distracted, she just had to focus, occasionally. Like now as she was saying "You can't just push into Vefirit system."

"I assure you I can."

"You shouldn't."

"There is slavery there, Drala'tem."

"It's a very young civilization."

"It is a very young civilization that should not poison itself, should not grow into an older civilization with a history of slavery. Surveillance reveals widespread suffering."

"So you land in whatever form, enforce your surveillance, enforce your law, change their economy, change their culture… what remains of the people of Vefirit? Once you go there, they belong to you forever."

"Is that so bad? Belonging to me forever?"

"I'm not falling for that."

"There are children serving as slaves. We could prevent that."

"But should we?"

"Drala'tem, there are no Gods but us. Learning the lessons of fire is all very well in theory, but the lessons of fire are learned and can be taught and accepted with less suffering than learning through trial and error and the pain that route provides. All that remains on that subject is recursive suffering that we could prevent. You are hopeful that they could learn on their own, but they can learn of other things after learning of this. Discovery and individuality can be recreated, but I am not willing to risk further suffering in those that would choose otherwise. I am a child of Rakhana."

"Rakhana will be well."

"Because I intervened."

"But if you - " He pressed a thrill of sensation through her nerves and she narrowed her eyes and said "Stop that."

"Never. You like that."

"I don't like that I like that. Plus your timing is suspect."

"That second part has less importance to me than the first. The third is insignificant as you cannot stop me."

"This is serious."

"Indeed it is. It occurs to me that subjugation to my whims may not be approved of in all quarters, but here… with you…"

"Like this… just… occurred to you?"

"Quiet. Be subjugated."

She laughed and said "You can't win every argument that way."

"That depends upon your definition of winning. I understand your concern, but I can prevent the potential suffering of uncounted people who would otherwise die to brutality, avarice and starvation."

"Historically interference in other cultures has not gone well."

"Historically had the Hanar not interfered, I would not be here. Had they not then abused the power they gained by interfering, I would not have become the man I was. Historically, Drala'tem, the Hanar were also mortal and could only mitigate so much, then fell to causing suffering themselves to suit their own needs. History did not include a God that could in fact interfere and rescue the powerless. A God that has all needs provided through his Manipar. It seems you are asking me what is slavery, misery and death if you can maintain your remote judgment of superiority through inaction, through being blameless. I can and should blame myself for not intervening. Your people, my people, worshipped Gods."

"Gods that were not real."

"Then all the more reason to have a God that is real and will intervene when required. It is required. I have power, that creates responsibility. I must not remain blindly ignorant. Once I know of an issue, I must address it, not become paralyzed through fear of changing natural history. Much of natural history, Drala'tem, is freighted with suffering. If I prevent suffering and it costs individuality, I would ask you to consider every mother that exists with a newborn child that is dying from starvation, neglect, abuse, ignorance… and whether or not she wishes for her child to live healthy or die ignorant and unique although there is someone that could help. You cannot become an advocate for ignorance and label it free will. There are cultures that develop religions and art, and that religion and art is revered while the individuals suffer in that culture and die entirely unheralded and in isolated pain. The irony, Drala'tem, is that most of the art and religion is there to appeal to a God that could ease suffering, heal disease, relieve hunger."

"Would you demand that each mother pray to you? Would you step into that role of God?"

"I do not desire worship, Drala'tem, unless it is from you, and even then only in specific forms. I do favor prostration as an act of devotion, but only in your case and that desire occurred to me long before becoming a God. Every mother need not pray, but she should have access to the ability to appeal to me. Once again we speak of consent. The mother cannot give consent if she is uneducated as to my existence or potential capabilities. The child cannot express anything but its own suffering. If there is no framework for consent I must inform them, I must provide it. They will not produce paeans to the God of fire, as that potential God has been pre-empted, but they will have the knowledge and security to create art because they are not dying from preventable causes and ritualized abuse and neglect. Individuality can spring from other sources. Turian art is different from human, from Drell. Each person can express their unique point of view and composition and thought. It will not be uniform. My ability to facilitate survival and autonomy should be granted to all that need it. That I will do it is a demand of my nature. How… we will do it… I appeal to you to help me create. In your life you set out to inform all peoples of a threat they did not understand from a God that had been cruel and unknown. You sought to spare their lives, to ask them to work together. You… created me. What is the difference between your mission then and mine now except in degree? I seek to carry forward your wishes, the end to death and suffering. I would set out to inform all peoples of the real laws of the lives they live involving physics, technology and potential intervention. Things that are truths. I wish to make those laws more favorable to survival and productivity, self realization that does not revolve around dysfunction and misinformation, does not require slavery and suffering."

"And what if they pray to you? Write those paeans to you?"

"I cannot stop them from doing it if they choose, but I will not require it."

"If you'd saved my parents' life from the slavers… if you'd been saved from the Hanar… we would never have met."

"Perhaps nobody like you or I will exist again. Would you wish that upon anyone? I would not. If it meant you would have never met me but lived a life free of suffering I would choose having never met you. I did tell you that you were born precious, that is still true for you, it is still true for them. I never valued Lal over Cara once I knew Cara existed. If you were 16 years old again, if you saw a slaver ship attempt to land yet be stopped or destroyed… would you tell whatever God intervened that they had no place there? Could you tell your parents that history must go as the Batarians had intended, that it was right that they were torn from you because… why? If I were a six-year-old child and you could take me from the Hanar, would you force me into that slavery so I could become the man that stood at your side? I know your answer. If I can keep the innocent and precious from being preyed upon, Drala'tem, I must. We must. People must make art from themselves, not be carved into the art of another's will."

"You've destroyed slavers?"

"Wherever I find them, yes."

"How often do you find them?"

"Too often, Drala'tem. I would prefer that each born creature had an inviolate right to speak to me."

"That would require an implant? They'd be a Reaper? You could control them?"

"An implant would not imply control, it would be only communication. Potential control where someone does wish to live our inspiration, live the choices you and I make together, open themselves to that, that is possible, that may happen as the paeans may. That I do not know. That we must decide."

"Maybe create zones where you don't interfere?"

"Those places would be harbors for slavers, for the abusive. I cannot allow it. Children would be born there, with no recourse, abused and enslaved. I claim the right to kill and not convert those who have chosen slavery and murder. I do not seek power over everyone. I seek for individuals to have power over their own circumstances."

"Except that it will result in you having power over everyone."

"We will find a way, Drala'tem. Perhaps not with the Verifit. Perhaps we make mistakes there. We will set children free, and I doubt that those children care about historical precedent or potential interference in culture. I must hear their voices."

She imagined the astronomical content of pure suffering, reminded of Protheans, reminded of the anger of those eradicated, did not have an answer. She asked "Out of the trillions of platforms… more now than before… you're pushing into new places, seeing and hearing the suffering?"

"Yes."

"Should I hear it?"

He was silent for a moment, his hands tightening around her waist and then his mouth moved on her throat before he paused and said "I do not wish to place more suffering in your mind to prove it exists. There is enough there."

"But if I'm thinking historically… and I should think, as you said, mind by mind, and I can't…"

His hand moved to smooth through her hair "We strive to preserve your limitations for a reason. You are now Cara, precious and valued for who you are, not what you can do. What must be done, I can do. You have suffered enough. Argue with me, but know I will kill slavers when I find them. Do you disagree?"

"No."

"I will save those I can save. I must, Drala'tem. We must. I can bear it all, all the minds, all the suffering, but I do not wish to share the pain, do not wish to share the mercilessness, do not wish to place that knowledge directly into your mind, where the screams and echoes of so much suffering would wake your own memories. Not right now, not as you are. If I were to change you to give you the capacity to carry it all, I would make you again a martyr and that is something I reject as an outcome. Please. If you must, imagine a young girl with intelligence, promise and love, a bright light of her people. Imagine she was home in her bed playing Pon-Ifa against herself instead of throwing balls of paper for her kitten and reading Shakespeare. Imagine her home taken, imagine her taken, having seen her parents fight, having seen her parents killed. Imagine a chip introduced, and the light gone from her eyes, gone from her heart, gone from her mind, gone from all the potential hearts she might have touched in a life. Imagine she suffered at the hands of slavers. Imagine she experienced hatred, pain, neglect and abuse until her life ended, brutally and soon after. That is all you need to imagine, and all I need to imagine, to know that the innocent are infinite in value and why they must not be abandoned. Imagine children without her potential. They are not gifted, they are not brilliant, they are not special to anyone, they are not special possibly even to themselves. They will not save a galaxy. They will not do more with their lives but live it. Perhaps poorly. Perhaps badly. Perhaps that is the best they can do. I would not save them because they remind me of you or of me, or because they have some value as worshippers to me. I would save them because they should live their life and someone should defend them, and that can be us."

She was crying and he turned her until her head was against his chest, a hand in her hair and a hand at her waist. He held back her memories, cleared a space inside the storm with will and communion, held back the smoke. He would not make her forget, but he would be with her in the light and watch over her, guard her.

She experienced his intent of protective solace, her gratitude that built to passion, her arms around him and her lips on his, the thought in her mind that she was thinking of herself when she should be thinking of the galactic issues…

He murmured to her "Drala'tem, these thoughts will be there when you wake. You have no time? You need to be somewhere?" His lips traveled over her skin, small and growing pulses of pleasure and heat blooming through her as he teased by saying "If you keep me occupied… I am not interfering in civilizations."

"But you're already implementing this everywhere and I can only argue from one place and time. By your argument, uncounted people will die, experience pain and suffering…"

"And I will implement. And we will help them. Now and later. We must continue to be unwise, Drala'tem, how else will we proceed?"

He was right and wrong, she was terrified and reassured, helpless and all powerful, all that swept away by his definition of winning, also her definition of losing.

She thought that this God thing was hard.

Then she thought that was a terrible pun.

Then she didn't think at all, only heard his laughter, communion rising like a flood until he was all through her, time meaningless and her grip on reality lost as his grip on her tightened and held.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Russ and Ahrem – Five years after duplication

Russ woke up to the proximity alarm, EDI letting him know they were about to enter the system, time to get up. The Commander's cabin was situationally trashed, as it always was in the morning or whenever they had time in bed, replicators unable to make blankets that stood up to talon slashes.

So they just made new blankets every day. Sometimes more often. Because Hemorus Vakarian was a very lucky man.

He nipped at Ahr's neck and whispered that it was time to get up. Ahr disagreed and that led to Russ agreeing with him and them missing his timed summons to the conference room, but he was the Commander, so too bad.

Senar had rebuilt the Normandy to include Reaper tech, the Ferox crew, and the Normandy crew, and she was the SR-3. Russ was in command and he liked it that way very much. Ahr didn't want command and Russ liked it that way very much also. Ahr wanted to drive a gun, so that's what he did.

The conference room held Klav, Kimin and Kerplunk. He'd tried to call the team the KKK, but EDI had informed him he should choose another name, as any human hearing of it would associate it with something else. As nobody on the team was human, he didn't care, but then he looked it up, he cared.

He waved, nobody asked why they were late, Klav just laughed slowly and Kimin rolled her eyes, Kerplunk attacked him and that was fine. To brief he said "Senar says there are slavers out here, and since they're being driven to more difficult places to reach, now there are slavers on an active fault line, so we need to decide who are the good guys and save them, who are the bad guys and kill them. Try not to die to earthquakes or snipers."

Klav said "Hah! You guys die all the time."

Kimin shrugged and said "We just get two weeks off."

Ahr said "Yeah, but Kerplunk doesn't like it."

Russ said "Good enough reason for me. Move out."


	77. Chapter 77

Ten years after the Crucible

Senar received the information that the Normandy would be setting in at Sanctuary, decided he wished to be there in the literal full glow of the self he most identified with and that he wished to bring his Drala'tem with her matching aura. There were new people she should meet. There was family to reconnect with and the place itself to behold.

She had thought of Sanctuary, but had never asked to visit. He would ask for her. She did not believe she would have much to say, considering her activities had been sex, communion and discussions, verbal and otherwise with a God whose privacy she zealously guarded.

He disagreed that she would not have much to say. Perhaps not much about herself, but about the people she loved, always. She would hear them as she heard him. She would speak and they would be blessed.

She honored their life together as inafer i'mae, something she could not and would not explain to others. She feared naming the sacred and inspiring envy or damning her blessed life with faint praise. He believed she was correct there, but she did not have to explain anything, she only had to be.

She had been wounded, reclusive and withdrawn by nature and inclination when she had first arrived here, but they had addressed all the questions of masochism and sadism, punishment and retribution that had weighed upon her then. She had surrendered and invited abuse that never arrived. He welcomed her surrender and granted his own. Abuse he would not allow, either in her castigation of herself based upon her inability to be omnipotent and perfect, or in their new role of growing omnipotence and perfection.

With no opportunity for her to effectively be a masochist or a martyr and with her unable to provoke him into expressing a side of himself she feared but would never be directed at her, she had gained trust in him, gained trust in herself, gained trust in them working and living together. She had gained distance from the habits of self denial. She had gained self expression and she once again felt she had the right to authority and agency that affected the course of all civilizations.

She had abandoned the names Cara, Lal, Shepard, Vakarian and even Fanning and now she thought of herself as Drala'tem Tuelon, names that were hers by right, names that defined who they were to each other. He had provided the opportunity to heal, to recognize that his love for her was neither a dying remnant of his mortality nor a whim, but was a need.

Between missions Sanctuary had become the home of the Normandy, with the tradition of a party when they set in. It had begun with the farm house being the site of celebration, but that location could not accommodate everyone invited any longer. The arrival of the Normandy triggered gatherings that had begun as hosting dozens, grew to hundreds and now potentially thousands. With this being closest in time to the 10-year anniversary of the Crucible the event had the potential for encompassing reunion. The Normandy had her own berthing, her own housing, a community including the Normandy's prior and new crew and the crew of the Ferox. There was a park for celebration.

His priorities were tiered and established now. He was first engaged and immersed in her presence, then he was immersed in the lives of those on Sanctuary and Rakhana and then he was aware of and immersed in the lives of all those encompassed by the growing circle of Reaper influence. He would not take her everywhere he potentially occupied a platform, but they could intersect, honor and be present for this moment in time. Honor her in her iterations. Honor them in their divergence.

He believed she preferred seclusion and singularity, but he wished to give her a choice. He wished to demonstrate that there was nothing to fear in the choice, at least. He knew her. She would appreciate but not long for Garrus or Cara's life and although he treasured her instincts to protect him, he did not require protection. Those he loved and guarded the most zealously would be safe and had their choices preserved. If they chose death he would allow it. The only person in whom death was not or would not be permitted was his Drala'tem. No part of her wished to die any longer and that had not required control of her mind, only the circuit of their recursive inspirations. He would share her physically with the worlds in this moment in time as he did each day in Spirit, with each choice, with each presenting issue, and then they would perhaps return to their home and immerse themselves again in each other, in the work and pleasures of timelessness. Perhaps they would stay or visit more often or correspond and commune.

He bore the given and granted power over all Reaper-created technology that had resulted in Geth being his tools and his Drala'tem being his through Crucible decree, his provision of newly-possible circumstance and her consent. "Reaper technology" as a definition covered technical acreage that intersected with so many fields of application and innovation that his potential control over Reapers themselves meant he had access to what amounted to infinite energy and near instantaneous production of anything imagined and then defined physically from bodies to solar power collectors.

Beyond complete control over Reapers, he had the added and growing influence over anything that utilized Reaper technology. EDI had been at the beginning of his tenure potentially entirely under his control as she had been built with the same Cerberus blood-bought technology that had recreated his Drala'tem.

EDI did not know that. He had not disclosed his potential control and he had not exerted influence or control but moment by moment he did amass potential for it as technology was introduced that cured disease, eased suffering and provided technical advances like replicators and mass effect travel. Each item replicated was his. Each person modified enough to change their inherent being was his.

Once someone chose to become his, whether or not they knew it, they were his responsibility and he protected them, provided for them and watched over them.

The choice of irrevocable immortality was still limited to a chosen few, those that Senar had known before his Godhood, those who earned it with service, those he loved as a man and not as a God.

Each day the pattern reiterated and held true. He presented options, offers and occasional ultimatums to the helpless, the ignorant and the brutal. The helpless were uplifted, the ignorant were educated and the brutal were terminated. Those approving of his control gained uplifting education and technical advantage. Those ambivalent to his control were left to whatever Path they chose as long as it did not cause suffering in another. Those disapproving of his control who attempted to make incursions upon his infrastructure and followers were annihilated.

An individual choosing to have a communication implant gave him remote access to what the individual wished to say, verbal or nonverbal, as well as biometric and environmental feedback regarding that individual. He answered each query, addressed each request whether it was conversation, prayer, complaint or demand. There were both embassies and temples dedicated to coordination with him, both functional and addressing different aspects of existence. Embassies had more to do with physical alterations, straightforward procedures and technical advancements. Embassies encompassed counseling, coordination, medical complexes, manufacturing and development. Temples addressed the more spiritual and ephemeral side of experiencing the new galaxy and the possibilities of it. Contemplation and communion were things he supported and depended upon himself as necessary to his equilibrium and inspiration. The need to speak to Gods had persisted in all cultures, developed independently and he filled that need, carrying on conversations with those who had none other to speak to on the subjects that most concerned them. Temples were spaces of beauty unique to each location, not intended to be standardized. All that was required was to have a place of contemplation where conversations with him were conducted aloud or silently and places of community where those who sought to speak to each other were provided as sanctuary in safety. Food was always available, spaces to rest and seek solitude or company were available in both embassies and temples and if someone chose to live and work in either or both locations, that was a Path available to all for as long as they wished.

There were no qualifications or conditions for obtaining a communication implant or a procedure that improved quality of life and security.

There were those who lost power over his assumption of it, those who sought to intimidate or murder his adherents, and for those people the end of their Path would be with the visitation of his wrath. Godly lightning bolts were reserved for those who defied his prohibition against slavery and abuse. Lightning bolts were often delivered in the form of the Normandy or any of the other policing forces that existed from Reaper in origin to forces composed of organics and synthetics to whom he provided direction, materiel and if necessary resurrection and restoration. Time spent on any path of dedicated service would be ageless if desired and would be potential immortality. Continue to serve and continue to live.

There was a path away from the inevitability of brutality for those who were prone to it through genetics, thought process or cultural influence. They could request and be granted surgical options to ease those impulses. They were also granted another option, and for many it was a lifeline of connection as it had been, was and would be for him. If there were those who felt their own will was insufficient to keep them from harm or harming, they could open themselves to direct communion. As communion with his Drala'tem granted him peace, he extended a form of that to others, giving to them her sense of communion and purpose. There were human and Drell traditions of meditation and those were the inspirations for the model developed by him and his Drala'tem in order to allow access to elevated thought and greater purpose in those whose minds had difficulty achieving that independently. Those who felt isolated or inadequate felt connected, gained inspiration. She had dubbed it "Nirvana Radio" and it was a voluntary and communal process that was limited in duration, accessible for a few hours a day on the guidance that sleeping, eating and life tasks be honored and completed in order to avoid creating dependence or death in immersion. The intent was to use that inspiration as solace and starting point with the intent of creating that sense in daily life through applied practice.

As time passed the method was adopted by not only those who were at risk, but those who wished to be a part of something greater than themselves. The beginning chords of filtered communion that individuals accessed held his and his Drala'tem's crafted emotional framework. Over time and with the addition of communal inspiration it grew to an experience of an ever-expanding cathedral of aspiration. Communities developed and expanded around temples, around those who chose the path of immersion, public service and outreach. The communal inspiration was joined by the like minded, becoming more powerful and more effective with each added emotional strand and harmonic. As communion grew there was no longer only the sun of her influence or the moon of his, but each individual person contributing a point of light, a sea of stars.

They created a graduated and thoughtful path that could take any life theoretically from ignorant abuse to elevated and community-minded service and immersion in art and innovation, whether they wished to get there by freedom from physical concerns, freedom to pursue intellectual or artistic paths or freedom to explore spiritual communion. Any or all in combination that suited the individual.

She was of course occasionally terrified that catastrophic success was possible, that someday he would seize final and ultimate control, as he had over her. Then she would recall that that control had been taken only to protect her and she had faith.

He already had final and ultimate control. It had been inevitable since the moment her eyes met his, since the sand enforced its will upon them, bringing them here. He would use that control, always, to facilitate her lit Path as his own will except when he disagreed with her and did as he chose. The greatest lessons of power came from knowing when to not use it. He gave control away to those who would benefit, needing nothing more for himself than her continued company and his continued vigilance.

If she believed his nature would change, that was as unlikely as her nature changing.

She was adamant, he was adamant, they were the Gods that shaped the worlds and if the galaxy was ultimately owned, shaped and controlled by their combined wills, none could do better.

None would do better.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

When Drala'tem realized it had been ten years she was a little shocked. She had spent a lot of time… timeless. She did not regret a single unremembered moment of it.

Travel to Sanctuary might have been disorienting or anticipatory but again, time went by in a blur because apparently they were both going to use the pilot's seat despite any half-considered protest from her. His consideration was more thought out and he was more persuasive. The shuttle was art, beautiful, reflective of the colors of home. The view of space was glorious and he wanted to remember her here, with him, because he would not be able to touch her as he wished in the presence of the crowd. This she felt, this she knew, this was accompanied by the press of his communicated desire through her mind, through her body in his familiar and insistent rising tide and rough undertow, through his hands, through his words and through the Rightness of what he wanted becoming what they wanted and what she wanted.

He did not wish to share her.

He wanted to share her with everyone.

He wanted to keep her to himself.

He wanted everyone to see they belonged with each other through right of inafer i'mae, the consecration of the Crucible, Fate, Rightness and their choice.

What did she want?

This question came often from both of them, a call and response of right of way and rite of passage. Now it came from him, curious of any potential change, anticipating her own tide and current.

The answer was as it had been for much of the time that had passed so quickly. She wanted him. She wanted to go with him wherever he went, stay with him wherever he stayed, be with him whoever he was. She wanted him. She had her own tiered desires, and the first was him.

She would never have his capacity to be everywhere at once, and if she was to choose one place, one time, one person, it was him.

He had asked her often, did she want children, did she want companions, did she want a pet and the answer had been…

No.

Communion being possible as it was, she spent much of her time lost and wished to remain that way. Another being in her care would be in many ways excluded from her primary focus and she feared them experiencing that exclusion, did not wish to be anxious about her priority. Him.

He always claimed those problems could have solutions.

She always claimed they were not problems as she did not want them. She had everything and all, communion with any number of trillions individually or all once, immersion or trailing her toes in the ocean, walking along the beach with the sea of this place or the sea of minds always available. She needed nothing more.

Satisfaction, assent and acceptance from him that she was not only satisfied, not only accepting, but exerting her right to determine that what she had was what she wanted.

As he had given it to her, he was pleased by that answer. He would be equally pleased by any answer that meant he could give her something unanticipated that she could newly desire.

New and familiar desires of the moment rose in her mind, on her skin, in her body, and he found them, fulfilled them, found more and many.

When the time came to disembark, the twilight of emerging from her internal life to external was unfamiliar but not unwelcome. He was there, always, and he would be there again, always. Never a rush or an emergency, only waking from dreams she would dream again with him. Daylight and new possibilities.

Displeasure from him in the minor inconveniences they would encounter were communicated with humor as he said "I wish to carry you but I will not." His thoughts bore the suggested image of him carrying her to the celebration, ignoring any and all guests and pinning her to one of the tables, silencing any objection by any means…

"What IS it with you guys and tables?"

"It is not the table itself that is the temptation."

"I think you are mistaken, I think the table being prohibited is exactly the temptation. We should go, and hurry home, because the words 'not here' displease the Reaper God."

"Plus there are children."

"Which is why we should not have any."

"A child with your green eyes would be welcome."

"Unless there is also a table and a spectator in the room. Any child we had would be raised by a Senar-driven nanny and who would have to explain why their mother can't play because she spends most of her time engaged in various flavors of bliss."

He shrugged and said "I could make a copy of you and inhabit that as well."

"I am going to say that I love you and that the limitations of mortality mean that there just can't be more bliss in my life, anything added to my life would be at least partially ignored, and so… you're stuck with me."

"You disappoint me." This was said as he scattered rapture through her, as he was pleased that she was pleased.

He offered her his arm and she took it, the bay door revealing an expansive area that looked like fairgrounds in a park. The smell of the place was evocative and she smiled. She did love it here. She said "Think we should stop glowing for the duration?"

He stopped, tilted his head toward her in genuine surprise that she would ask and said "If I cannot have the table, you cannot appear to be simply one of the crowd."

"That isn't a fair trade at all."

"You need not trade anything, Drala'tem."

"You are such a show off."

"I am not a show off. I am a God."

"You are a God who shows off."

"If I am permitted that once every ten years I will take it. If anyone slights you, point them out, I will kill them."

She laughed and they made their show-offy entrance. Awe and new names and effusive introductions. She realized he had not appeared glowing since leaving Sanctuary 10 years ago, most had never seen him this way.

But most had seen him, talked to him, knew him.

She loved the glow and the name 'Drala'tem' but they were both deeply personal things she did not wish to explain to anyone, she said "Call me Dee" during introductions and Senar introduced her that way as well. In some ways she was back at the choice to decide who she was after her rescue from Mindoir, not hiding her pain but hiding her bliss. I can't explain my name and it does not belong to you, but to him. I can't explain why I glow and he won't.

In other ways it was like her every day. Immersion in the lives of those who wished to be there, wished to be together, stories and aspirations. She had lived by a sea whose waves moved toward her, measured and predictable. This was a river of people, rushing rapids and too much to take in, but there were universal smiles and people glad to see him. He did not let go of her arm until he had to in order to catch a child that launched herself at him, a little Drell girl, red and blue colors, maybe three years old. The little girl said "Hanam! Hanam! You're pretty!"

Hanam. Grandfather.

Senar said "Tilema, you're beautiful."

Tilema asked him "Can I be pretty like you?"

Senar touched Tilema's nose and a matching glow spread over her skin to her delight. Tilema struggled down again, spun around, admiring her hands as she spun and then ran to a Drell woman approaching, walking at the side of Yased. Tilema grabbed the woman's hands and began pulling her over.

Yased grinned and said "Hell of an entrance."

Dee smiled and was introduced to Yased's wrist bound, Wiva. They were reconstructing Rakhana, helping with the clean up, but did not want to miss this event. Large sections of the planet were reclaimed, habitable again, protected from the atmosphere and surrounding areas. Expansion and resettlement would continue there.

The Drell had a home, there was no more Compact, there would be no more Kepral's induced in many of the Drell, and it could be cured if it did develop.

If Drala'tem needed an answer to a question she did not wish to ask or would interrupt the conversation, Senar told her silently. She did not speak often at all, but admired Tilema's glow, which would last as long as the party and then fade. She hugged Yased and Wiva, immersed herself in their lives. Nobody was awkward or hesitant about her, it seemed they were kept well informed of her existence, her contributions to galactic planning and in some ways felt they knew her through communion. Anybody could get to know her through communion at any point, and it appeared they had. Tilema became fascinated by the interactions of glow, the swirls and whorls and arcs of light. Drala'tem picked her up and watched the little girl play with the light on their arms.

More people, more river, those that Senar stopped to speak to or those that cut through the crowd to get to them.

Vigil was present, in a Prothean body. There was a Prothean community on Sanctuary, Vigil had consulted on which Avatars of their people should be brought back first, to decide upon any integrative future of Prothean people, where they would live and what they would do.

Senar approached a table with two women and a baby, and she did not know what species they were at first, Senar providing the information that this was what Quarians now looked like without their suits, which they no longer required. They were beautiful, glowing eyes, long dark hair and graceful markings on pale skin. One of them stood up with the baby, marched over to Senar purposefully, handed him the baby and then threw her arms around Drala'tem, who was not really surprised that this could be a reaction from anybody in the crowd at the moment, but did not know who she was until she said "Shepard. I've missed you but I haven't missed you."

Tali indicated the baby and said "This is Tarav." She indicated the smiling Quarian woman at the table and said "And this is Sooth. I believe you've met."

Tali had stayed with Sooth for her recovery. She never did get all of her memories back, but they had all made new ones. Tali and Sooth had never left each other's company, had settled on Sanctuary and worked in technical development and Quarian outreach. Senar had arranged for new bodies and for a baby Quarian boy who would never need a suit.

When Sooth came to hug her, Drala'tem asked "What is the count up to now?"

They were both crying as Sooth said "High 1140."

They met hands, then fingers entwined as Sooth said "High 1148."

"Won't that mess up the count?"

"No."

There were at least a hundred baby Krogan and she finally got to meet Klav, the Krogan from the tank. Wrex was there with Bakara and Mordin, who said "Krogan live long lives. Salarians do not but fortunately I am too useful to die."

Senar smiled and said "You did tell me at one point you could win big."

"And I did." Mordin told Drala'tem "Salarians coming to Sanctuary in great numbers. I may be obsolete soon."

Senar said "You will be obsolete only when you decide it is so."

"Excellent. No plans to be obsolete any time soon."

Continuing on through the crowd they passed by a dance floor, she caught sight of Joker, straight spined, dancing with a human woman. Senar informed her "Jeff's Vrolik's has been cured."

She asked him "Who is with him?"

"EDI. She remains the AI of the Normandy, the AI of all vessels she had previously occupied, she is integrated into the Citadel and any other vessel where she feels she could be of most use. She networks as I do, occupies many platforms, and chose a human female platform to travel with Jeff. They are on the Normandy most often, but come here for shore leave. Hemorus commanding."

"She's beautiful."

"Indeed she is."

"Are Hemorus and… Garrus… here?"

"Yes. Garrus's name in that form is Ahrem. They are at the farmhouse. We shall go there next."

"Why aren't they here?"

"Cara often insists on cooking. It could all be provided, of course, but she enjoys it, and she does not spend all day at the gatherings, usually only in the evenings. Hemorus, Ahrem, Kimin and Kerplunk live there now and they often keep Cara and Garrus company."

The fairground was not far from the farmhouse, a beautiful walk through newly created trees and whimsical topiary. He took her arm again, his hand over hers. This had been, could have been her life. It looked like an amazing life and she was glad for them, not sad for herself, but contemplated the word 'divergence' and its iterations.

Knocking on the farmhouse door was surreal and having the door answered by… Garrus… who was not Garrus… even more so. He was prominently scarred in plate and hide, Vakarian blue hoops pierced through mandible and fringe. Her heart sped up and pounded. Senar smiled as they stared at each other for long moments without interruption other than the ringing in her ears. Russ's voice sounded from back in the house. "Who is it?"

Senar confirmed, this was Ahrem, who said back over his shoulder "Nobody. Door to door salespeople." He grinned and said "It'll take them a few minutes to figure that out, in the meantime…" Ahrem grabbed her and lifted her into a huge hug, laughing and saying "Run away with me, little girl. They won't mind."

She was crying, arms wrapped around him as he said "Missed you. He's making you happy? I mean, not right now. Clearly not happy right now."

She nodded and he kissed the top of her head, said "Good. If anybody asks, he's the one that made you cry."

Russ came into view behind Ahrem and said "If they're selling alcohol, buy" and then he stopped short, grey eyes stunned. He was also scarred, huge and had been casually wiping his hands on a towel, which he dropped when he saw them. Ahrem said "Can I keep her?"

Senar and Russ both said "No" in mock irritated tones.

"But she glows. She's clearly better."

Russ said "I glow, dumbass."

"Well, better than Cara then."

"Obviously that." Russ came forward, Ahrem handed her over reluctantly and Russ gave her his own hug, asked also "You good? Need me to kill him?"

"I'm good."

"I'm so glad because I really can't back that up. Come to the kitchen."

The kitchen was chaos, Kimin trying to keep Kerplunk away from the food, clouds of… it took her a moment to identify them… multicolored flying virce swarming around light sources in the room. Cara and Garrus did not notice them before a particularly attentive virce did, a pup the size of a hand in wingspan, and soon she and Senar both had orbiting baby virce.

Ahrem grinned and said "They're like moths. They won't stop."

Kerplunk noticed their entrance, took off in a huge leap and attempted to tackle Senar, who did not move, but did start scratching her head as she stood with her paws on his shoulders.

Kimin bolted over next, scarred herself, flaring blue with excitement and throwing herself into a hug with Drala'tem.

Garrus and Cara seemed immune to chaos, working side by side on something and when she tried to shift position to his other side to reach something he picked her up, shifted her over and deposited her in the new workstation.

They were baking rolls, it looked like.

And she knew it was because it was bread from home and that could be reproduced… but should not be replicated. Should be made by hand at home.

Ahrem settled his hands on her shoulders and said "They won't notice. She might if someone says something mispronounced or trivial. Then she pays attention."

Garrus and Cara formed rolls from a batch of dough until Russ said loudly "Hey, dufus!"

Garrus asked Cara "Which one of us does he mean?"

She shrugged and said "Probably both. I'll take this one." She looked up and dropped her roll, Garrus caught it and then turned to stare himself.

Drala'tem said "He probably meant me. You guys… go back to what you're doing. It's important."

So she was quickly inside a hug where Kimin didn't let go, Ahrem had his hands on her shoulders, Cara snuck in where Kimin wasn't and Garrus hugged around the women, Russ said "Fuck it" and put his arms around all of them saying "I win."

She thought she won, really.

Communion had lots of flavors. Senar smiled at her, scratching at Kerplunk's head still, who was in varren ecstasy, all of them now orbited by excited virce.

She was among the people she loved and they were all so precious, she did not really have much to say but she loved listening, to stories, everyone accepting glowing and 10 year spans of absence, settling back into making bread and the established rhythms of the kitchen. Cara put out rolls and kigi nut butter, there was a tray dedicated to feeding Kerplunk that Russ manned and fed her in intervals order to keep her from taking anybody else's food. The virce settled down into a few baskets after rolls were put down for them.

They talked about the Normandy, the farm, she caught up on the particulars of events through the years.

Senar began to discuss the growing issue of concern regarding Leviathan, their potential for attempted conquest and their threat of mental domination as Kimin watched and listened, rapt and fascinated.

Cara threw a roll at Senar and said "Stop it. You know the rule. No terror at the table."


End file.
